Sustainable EU funding of European defence cooperation?Accountable and transparent coordination of arms export policies needed

Publication date: 03/12/2019

In 2017 the European Commission launched the European Defence Fund, which will become fully operational in 2021. With this fund, the Commission  will fund collaborative research and development projects on new military products and technologies. Although its primary aim is to strenghten intra-European defence cooperation and support the defence industry in the EU, it will also pose challenges to the coordination and governance of national arms exports control systems and policies.

This paper presents two important lessons on arms export controls that should be taken into account if European defence cooperation is to be sustainable: (1) the need to develop consensus-based arms export procedures in co-development programmes, and (2) the need to ensure par-liamentary involvement at the national and European levels in arms export controls.

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