The Nordic Countries and the European Security and Defence Policy

CONVENTIONAL ARMS CONTROL 243a European armaments policy and thereby simplify and harmonize the productionand procurement of equipment within the EU.The specific initiatives and actions adopted in this field by the EU include:the 1997 Programme for Preventing and Combating Illicit Trafficking in ConventionalArms; the 1998 EU Code of Conduct on Arms Exports; the 1998 EUJoint Action on Combating the Destabilising Accumulation and Spread ofSmall Arms and Light Weapons; the 1999 EU Development Council Resolutionon Small Arms; the 1999 EU–USA Declaration of Common Principleson Small Arms and Light Weapons; the 1999 EU–Canada Joint Declaration onSmall Arms and the subsequent establishment of the EU–Canada Joint WorkingGroup on Small Arms; the 2000 EU Common List of Military Equipment; andthe 2003 Council Common Position on the Control of Arms Brokering. 37The European Parliament has also adopted numerous resolutions on bothSALW and conventional arms. These include a resolution on small arms 38 andthe Parliament’s responses to the annual report on the Code of Conduct. 39The EU member states have made joint statements at UN discussions onSALW, most notably at the 2001 UN Conference on the Illicit Trade in SmallArms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects, 40 and the first Biennial Meeting ofStates held as a follow-up to that conference in July 2003. 41 Last, but not least,the EU has at various times initiated specific arms embargoes on Afghanistan,Bosnia and Herzegovina, China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Croatia,Ethiopia, Eritrea, Indonesia, Liberia, Libya, the Former Yugoslav Republicof Macedonia, Myanmar (Burma), Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, Sudan,Yugoslavia (the Socialist Federal Republic and the Federal Republic) and Zimbabwe.42The CFSP and small arms and light weaponsThe EU Code of Conduct on Arms Exports is one of the most important andperhaps most successful elements of the CFSP. In 2005 the Code was reviewedin discussions in the COARM committee, and the draft of a new version was37 For more information see European Commission, Small Arms and Light Weapons: The Response ofthe European Union (Office for Official Publications of the European Communities: Luxembourg, 2001),URL .38 European Parliament resolution on small arms, documents B5-0723, 0729 and 0730/2001, Brussels,15 Nov. 2001, URL .39 European Parliament resolution on the Council’s Fifth Annual Report according to Operative Provision8 of the European Union Code of Conduct on Arms Exports (2004/2103(INI)), documentP6_TA(2004)0058, 17 Nov. 2004, URL .40 European Union, ‘Statement by H. E. Mr. Louis Michel, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of ForeignAffairs of Belgium on behalf of the European Union’, 55th session of the United Nations GeneralAssembly, Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects, NewYork, 9 July 2001, URL .41 International Action Network on Small Arms, ‘United Nations Biennial Meeting of States on SmallArms and the Programme of Action 7–11 July 2003’, URL .42 For more information see the SIPRI Non-proliferation and Export Control Project, ‘European Unionapproach to arms embargoes’, URL .