Scrutinizing arms exports in Europe: The reciprocal relationship between transparency and parliamentary control

Information on exports of conventional military equipment was traditionally kept out of the public and political realm. In recent decades this gradually changed, and within the EU, Member States are legally bound to publish an annual report on arms exports since the implementation of Common Position 2008/944. However, Member States remain free to determine the extent of transparency they wish to apply to their reporting on arms exports. In this article, Diederik Cops and Nils Duquet compare the level of transparency on arms exports in eight Member States by using qualitative criteria such as frequency, comparability, comprehensiveness and disaggregation. The findings on transparency are then related to the level of parliamentary control on arms export control policies. The article concludes by illustrating how levels of transparency on arms exports and parliamentary control interact.

Cops, D., Duquet, N. & Gourdin, G. (2017), ‘Scrutinizing arms exports in Europe: The reciprocal relationship between transparency and parliamentary control’, Sicherheit und Frieden, 35, (2), 79-84.