EP - Arms exports

Raũl ROMEVA RUEDA (Greens/EFA, ES)
Report on the Council's Fifth Annual Report according to Operative Provision 8 of the European Union Code of Conduct on Arms Exports
(2004/2103(INI))
Doc.: A6-0022/2004
Procedure : Own-initiative
Debate : 17.11.2004

Raũl ROMEVA RUEDA (Greens/EFA, ES), for the Foreign Affairs Committee, will be putting forward a draft own-initiative resolution on European Union Code of Conduct on Arms Exports. The committee is calling for the introduction in the EU of a special tax on the arms trade, and for the EU to carry on active diplomacy with a view to such a tax being levied worldwide as being suggested by the United Nations General Assembly as well as by the Presidents of Brazil, Chile and France, and by the Spanish Head of Government, with the revenue from these taxes being paid into funds for victims of armed conflicts in particular and poverty alleviation more generally.

The committee welcomes in particular the efforts of Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK, to control the brokering of conventional arms, and calls on the other Member States to speed up national processes for the implementation of the brokering controls provided for in the Council Common Position on the control of arms brokering. MEPs in the committee also want the Council and the Member States to maintain the EU embargo on trade in arms with the People's Republic of China and not to weaken the existing national limitations on such arms sales.

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