The Scope and Implications of a Tracing Mechanism for Small Arms ...

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5.3.1 European Joint Action
The Joint Action of 17 December 1998, relative to “the EU’s
contribution to combating the destabilising accumulation and spread of
small arms and light weapons” 45 does not contain any binding provisions
with respect to traceability. Article 3, which deals with aspects related to
this, stipulates only that “the EU aim at building consensus in the relevant
international forums, and in a regional context as appropriate”. As such, this
initiative simply promotes a policy with respect to those outside the Union
and with respect to the member States, “for the realisation of the following
principles and measures”:
• In order to ensure control, the establishment and maintenance of
national inventories of legally-held weapons owned by the country's
authorities (Article 3.d);
• The commitment to combat illicit trafficking of small arms through
regional and international cooperation and enhanced information
exchange (Article 3.f);
• The establishment of confidence building measures, including
measures to promote increased transparency and openness, through
regional registers on small arms and regular exchanges of available
information, on exports, imports, production and holdings of small
arms, and on national weapons legislation (…) (Article 3.e). The
regional registers referred to are not the systematic records
indispensable to the functioning of a tracing system, but are rather
registers of a general nature.
Let us point out that the EU had introduced at the end of 2000 a
proposed Plan of Action in the context of the preparation of the UN
Conference on Small Arms and Light Weapons, 46 which foresees some
interesting elements relating to traceability. Notable among them are:
• The reinforcement of the traceability of small arms, by negotiating
during the following years, an international convention, which will
generalize, in particular, marking and registration practices, according
to harmonized and universally recognized systems (Article 27);
• The requirement at the national level to apply unique and reliable
marking to small arms, and to keep records for a minimum of 50 years
of the data necessary to subsequently trace illicit weapons (Articles 2. b
and c), and covering production, stocks and transfers (Article 3.).