European Parliament resolution on the Council's Second Annual Report according to Operative Provision 8 of the European Union Code of Conduct on Arms Exports   (13177/1/2000 - C5-0111/2001 - 2001/2050(COS))
Date: 2001-10-03
Institutions: European Parliament
Subjects: European Union, European arms policy, activity report, administrative transparency, code of conduct, export monitoring, military equipment

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Wednesday 3 October 2001

35.
Expects, therefore, that, with a view to the successful integration of migrant workers, the Member
States will take account of the availability of a job, accommodation and educational opportunities for
children as a precondition for the issuing of residence permits;

36.
Urges the Member States to take decisions on authorisation of residence irrespective of the gender,
race, ethnic origin, religion or philosophy of life, disability, age or sexual orientation of the third-country
national concerned;

Urges the Member States, further, to fill job vacancies initially with third-country nationals already

37.
resident in the Member States and to recruit further migrant workers only as a fallback;

38.
Urges the Member States to devise information campaigns to heighten public awareness of the
phenomenon of immigration and the objectives of national and European policies, and to provide their
civil servants with information and training in legislation and European programmes in order to establish
more rational and efficient methods for the reception and integration of immigrants;

Urges each Member State, finally, to monitor immigration into its territory with the aid of a uni-
39.
form statistical system and to forward that data to the Commission annually so that it may monitor immi-
gration flows and assess the overall impact and put forward targets with a view to future approximation of
immigration laws;

40.
Stresses in this connection that databases on third-country nationals have been set up in a number
of Member States without any particular data protection being provided for; calls therefore for the data
protection provisions that apply to Member State nationals to be applied to third-country nationals as well;

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Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council and Commission and to the parlia-

41.
ments of the Member States.

9. Arms exports

A5-0309/2001

European Parliament resolution on the Council’s Second Annual Report according to Operative
Provision 8 of the European Union Code of Conduct on Arms Exports (13177/1/2000 ) C5-0111/
2001 ) 2001/2050(COS))

The European Parliament,

. having regard to the Council’s Second Annual Report according to Operative Provision 8 of the

European Union Code of Conduct on Arms Exports (13177/1/2000 . C5-0111/2001) (1),

. having regard to Article 3 of the Treaty on European Union, on consistency in the Union’s external

activities, and to Article 11, on the objectives of the Common Foreign and Security Policy,

. having regard to the EU’s Development Declaration of May 2000 with its commitment to policy
coherence, including coherence between the EU’s policy on arms exports and the EU’s development
objectives,

. having regard to the Guidelines on EU Policy towards third countries on torture and other cruel,

inhuman or degrading treatment as adopted by the General Affairs Council on 9 April 2001,

(1) OJ C 379, 29.12.2000, p. 1.

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. having regard to Article 17 of the Treaty on European Union, on cooperation in the field of arma-
ments, and to Article 296 of the Treaty establishing the European Community, on protection of
national security interests,

. having regard to the Joint Action (1) adopted by the Council on the European Union’s contribution to

combating the destabilising accumulation and spread of small arms and light weapons (2),

. having regard to the EU Programme (3) for preventing and combating illicit trafficking in conventional

arms (4),

. having regard to its resolution of 5 October 2000 on the Council’s 1999 Annual Report on the EU
Code of Conduct on Arms Exports (11384/1999 . C5-0021/2000 . 2000/2012(COS)) (5) and to its
previous resolutions on this subject,

. having regard to Rule 47(1) of its Rules of Procedure,

. having regard to the report of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Common Security

and Defence Policy (A5-0309/2001),

A. whereas the external action of the EU is guided by values of democracy and the protection of human

rights,

B. whereas it follows from the Treaty that the Common Commercial Policy must be consistent with the

Common Foreign and Security Policy,

C. whereas the EU Code of Conduct on Arms Exports was a step forward in ensuring the consistency and

coherence of Member States policies towards arms exports,

D. whereas the EU should take greater responsibility for peace and security in Europe and worldwide by

taking further initiatives to promote arms limitation and disarmament,

E. whereas the General Affairs Council on 9 April 2001 adopted Guidelines on EU policy towards third
countries on torture, and the UN Commission on Human Rights recently called on all governments to
‘take appropriate effective legislative, administrative, judicial and other measures to prevent and prohi-
bit the production, trade, export and use of equipment which is specifically designed to inflict torture
or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment’,

F. whereas the Code of Conduct should be strengthened so that exports of military, paramilitary and
security equipment shall be denied in circumstances where they might contribute to gross human
rights abuses; and to ensure that this is effectively implemented, multilateral dialogue and information
sharing between the EU Member States should be improved,

G. whereas the first Annual Report on the Code of Conduct revealed that the associated countries of
central and eastern Europe and Cyprus, as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Canada had
agreed to align themselves with the principle of the EU Code of Conduct,

H. whereas Member States agreed to a Common List of Military Equipment covered by the EU Code of

Conduct as adopted on 13 June 2000,

(1) OJ L 9, 15.1.1999, p. 1.
(2) The term ‘small arms and light weapons’ also covers very lethal and powerful weapons, such as portable anti-tank
and surface to air missiles. International organisations have adopted different more precise definitions of this term.

(3) Adopted by the General Affairs Council of 26 June 1997.
(4) The term ‘conventional arms’ refers to arms that are not atomic, biological or chemical. Since there is no generally

accepted definition of what constitutes arms, there is neither any such definition of this term.

(5) OJ C 178, 22.6.2001, p. 273.

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I. whereas the effective monitoring of end-use is crucial and whereas the lack of provision for verifying

the end use of export weapons in the Code of Conduct is a major weakness,

J. whereas the control of arms brokers is absolutely essential to stem the proliferation of arms in crisis

regions,

K. whereas controls on the licenced production of military equipment abroad by EU companies are

fundamental for preventing the circumvention of arms export control measures,

L. whereas transparency in this field is vital in order to ensure democratic accountability,

M. whereas some Member States still do not produce annual reports on their arms export control policies

and there is no consistency in the reports produced by other Member States,

N. whereas there was a UN Conference in July 2001 on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light

Weapons in All Its Aspects,

1.

Reiterates its belief that EU policy in arms export must:

(a)

ensure the consistency and efficiency of the EU’s external action, in particular the Union’s goals in
combating terrorism, conflict prevention, combating poverty and its promotion of human rights;

(b)

reinforce the EU’s development cooperation objectives, and international development goals;

(c)

satisfy the security policy imperatives and needs of the EU;

(d) meet the needs and challenges of the European defence industry;

(e)

contribute to the development of a common defence policy;

2. Welcomes the publication of the Council’s second annual report and the clear signs contained within
it that considerable progress has been made towards greater convergence of Member States’ policies
towards arms export controls;

Recommends that the coming third annual report should make available as full an evaluation as

3.
possible of how far the goals as stated in paragraph 1 have been reached;

Underlines that the candidate countries should in their negotiations with the Union give guarantees

4.
that they will implement the Code of Conduct in full;

5. Welcomes the decisions by Turkey and Malta to subscribe to the Code’s principles;

Regrets that so far the USA has not adopted its own code of conduct on arms exports; recommends

6.
that this issue should be made a permanent component of the transatlantic dialogue;

7.
Calls on the Member States, the Council and the Commission to work towards an international code
of conduct on arms transactions and to inform Parliament of their activities in this respect in the annual
report on the application of the Code of Conduct on arms exports;

8.
Regrets that so far the UN has not been able to establish a global arms exports control regime and
that some of the Permanent Members of the Security Council, in particular Russia and China, continue to
export arms without any restraints; asks the Council to take action at EU level for establishing a global
arms exports control regime on UN-basis;

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Calls on the Council to encourage the Member States to deny arms deliveries to countries which do

9.
not submit information to the UN’s Register of Conventional Arms;

Supports the Member States’ intention to update regularly the Common List of Military Equipment

10.
and their willingness to put forward the list for consideration within the Wassenaar Arrangement;

Urges Member States to reach early agreement on what constitutes an ‘essentially identical trans-

11.
action’;

12. Welcomes the fact that there has been agreement in Council on a common list of non-military
security and police equipment; urges the Commission to:

. act swiftly to bring forward an appropriate Community mechanism to control such exports;

. ensure that this Community instrument includes a ban on the promotion, trade and export of police
including leg-irons,

and security equipment whose use is inherently cruel,
electroshock stun-belts and inherently painful devices such as serrated thumb cuffs;

inhuman or degrading,

. ensure that this Community instrument will suspend the transfer of equipment whose medical effects
are not fully known, such as high-voltage electroshock weapons, pending the outcome of a rigorous
and independent inquiry into its effects; as well as suspend the transfer of equipment where its use in
practice has revealed a substantial risk of abuse or unwarranted injury, such as leg-cuffs, shackle
boards, restraint chairs and pepper gas weapons;

. commit itself to an EC-wide ban on the manufacture and use or, where applicable, the suspension of

such equipment.

13. Welcomes the work being done to achieve greater convergence of Member States policy regarding
exports to countries and regions not subject to embargoes but which merit special vigilance;

14.
Is disappointed that little progress seems to have been made towards controlling arms brokerage;
calls for Member States to increase their efforts towards controlling arms brokerage, and also to work
towards the development of an international legally binding agreement on brokering;

Regrets deeply that no progress appears to have been made towards agreeing a common system of

15.
end-use monitoring;

Regrets deeply that no action has been taken to place controls in the licensed production abroad of
16.
military equipment by EU companies; calls on the governments of the Member States to require their
explicit consent for the transfer of military items produced abroad under a licensing agreement, in order
to reduce the risk that equipment is transferred on to dubious and proscribed end-users;

Reiterates its position that as soon as possible the Code should be made legally binding for all

17.
current and applicant EU Member States;

Calls on the Council to ensure that the Member States move forward in a spirit of partnership,
18.
cooperation and mutual confidence-building with the applicant countries to develop and implement the
provisions of the Code of Conduct together, attaching particular significance to effective respect for inter-
national embargoes, which should be legally enforceable through national legislation;

Calls on the Council and the Commission to provide assistance to the applicant states for a respon-

19.
sible disposal of surplus weapons in cooperation with NATO and the OSCE;

As regards transparency

20. Welcomes the agreement by Member States to give a fuller description of the reasons for the denial
of licences; expects this information to be included in future annual reports;

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21.
Calls on the Member States to extend the multilateral consultation mechanism agreed for dual-use
items in the dual-use regulation of 22 June 2000, meaning that they would circulate a notification to all
Member States if they grant an export licence for an item for which another Member State previously
denied a licence;

22. Welcomes the increase in the number of countries producing annual reports on their arms export
control policies; calls on those Member States who do not yet publish annual reports to do so;

23.
Underlines that the consolidated Council report in its current shape does not allow effective evalu-
ation of Member States’ export control policy; welcomes the commitment by Member States to harmonise
their national annual reports and urges them to ensure that common minimum standards are set at the
most comprehensive level possible; calls on the Commission to draft a proposal for uniform criteria to be
used by the Member States in drawing up their reports on arms exports and, in this regard, to follow the
example of the most informative and transparent report by a Member State;

24.

Urges the Member States to ensure that their harmonised national annual reports will include:

. information on licensing policy,

including policy developments, treaty commitments, international
obligations (e.g. embargoes), changes to legislation, and the way in which the state has implemented
the EU Code,

. for each licence granted or denied a description of the equipment, details on the quantity, destination,

end-user and (at least approximate) value,

. information on the type of licence and the dates of any decisions taken, and where applicable, the

reasons for denial, including the substance and outcome of bilateral consultations on denials,

. separately listed actual transfers, again including data on the nature of the goods, type of licence,

quantities, values, destinations and end-users,

. the same level of disclosure on all transfers of controlled goods which escape the licensing process,

e.g. government-to-government transactions;

Believes that all Member States should make provisions for parliamentary scrutiny of their arms

25.
export control policies and their export licensing decisions;

26.
Reiterates the view that greater effort is needed to establish common rules for EU control of the
legal trade in small arms and light weapons, and effective EU controls to combat and eradicate trafficking
and smuggling in such arms; calls on Member States to actively follow up its contribution to the 2001 UN
Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects; calls on Member
States to promote the adoption of strict legally binding international criteria, based on States’ obligations
under international human rights standards and international humanitarian law, on arms transfers, in the
form of a Framework Convention on International Arms Transfers;

27.
Demands that arms exports are progressively integrated into the common commercial policy and
that Article 296 of the EC Treaty is adapted accordingly; believes that Member States should invoke Arti-
cle 296 of the EC Treaty only in exceptional circumstances, when they consider their essential interests are
at risk;

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28.
Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission and the parlia-
ments and governments of the Member States and of the third countries who have agreed to align them-
selves with the principles of the EU Code of Conduct.