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Federal government wants to tighten regulations for arms exports

The federal government wants to tighten the regulations for German arms exports.

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Federal government wants to tighten regulations for arms exports

The federal government wants to tighten the regulations for German arms exports. Consideration of human rights, democracy and the rule of law in the recipient country should be given greater weight in future when making decisions about arms exports. This emerges from the cornerstones of the Federal Ministry of Economics for an arms export control law, as government circles said on Thursday. The ministry will shortly initiate coordination with the security departments of the federal government.

With the new arms export control law announced by the traffic light coalition, the “restrictive arms export policy” of the federal government is to be laid down in law for the first time, according to the ministry. According to the coalition agreement, the federal government's "political principles" for the export of war weapons, for example, are to be anchored in law.

The key issues paper by the Ministry of Economic Affairs states that export licenses should not be issued if there is reasonable suspicion that the goods to be exported are used for “internal repression, ongoing and systematic human rights violations and gender or minority-specific violence or in connection with the deployment of child soldiers”.

Applications for recipient countries with a tense human rights situation should be able to be rejected in the event of ongoing and systematic violations of human rights in these countries - also beyond the reference to the specific use of armaments.

EU member states, NATO countries and NATO-equivalent countries would be privileged when it comes to arms export decisions, it said. "The export of weapons of war and other armaments to these countries is not restricted in principle." The group of countries with equal status with NATO should be expanded to include South Korea, Singapore, Chile and Uruguay.

Furthermore, according to the key points, the instrument of so-called post-shipment controls is to be legally anchored and its scope expanded. During such controls, it is checked whether the delivered weapons are still available in the recipient country with the specified end user. In the event of violations, a graduated sanction concept should apply.

It also states that the Federal Government's goal is to strengthen cooperation within the framework of the common foreign and security policy at European level. The federal government is committed to the project of an EU arms export regulation.

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