Amendment to the Council Common Position 2008/944/PESC

On 17 September 2019, the Council Decision (CFSP) 2019/1560 of 16 September 2019 amending Common Position 2008/944/CFSP defining common rules governing control of exports of military technology and equipment has been published on the Official Journal of the European Union(OJ L 239/16 of 19.09.2019).

Main amendments to the Common Position 2008/944/CFSP are the following:

• Article 1 of the Common Position is modified as to insert the verification of criteria listed in article 2 also for government-to-government transfers. Moreover, a paragraph is added imposing the reconsideration of export licence even if already issued if new relevant information is available.
• Paragraph 1 of article 2 is modified as to add also the respect of international “commitments”, beside international “obligations” for Criterion One. In the same article, two additional points are inserted as additional criteria to verify before granting an export authorisation:
  • ba) the international obligations of Member States under the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons and the relevant Protocols annexed thereto
  • bb) the international obligations of Member States under the Arms Trade Treaty
  • ca) the commitments of Member States under the Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects.
• Article 7 is modified as to explicit the type of information Member States should exchange on (including information on denial notifications and arms export policies, as well as by identifying possible measures to further increase convergence).
• Article 8 is modified as to establish the 30^thof June as deadline for each Member State to send information to the European External Action Service on its exports of military technology and equipment and on its implementation of the Common Position. The same article is modified as to establish the publication on the EEAS website of an annual report available to the public.
• Finally, the term for the revision of the Common position has been extended to every 5 years, instead of every 3 years.
• Other minor amendments concern the adaptation of the text to recent legislation instruments (e.g. in article 6 Regulation 428/2009) and/or nomenclature (such as in Article 2, “Ottawa Convention”).

The text of the Council Decision (CFSP) 2019/1560 is available on: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:OJ.L_.2019.239.01.0016.01.ENG&toc=OJ:L:2019:239:TOC