7/2020 PEACE RESEARCH INSTITUTE FRANKFURT / LEIBNIZ-INSTITUT HESSISCHE STIFTUNG FRIEDENS- UND KONFLIKTFORSCHUNG SIMONE WISOTZKI // GERMAN ARMS EXPORTS TO THE WORLD? TAKING STOCK OF THE PAST 30 YEARS PRIF Report 7/2020 GERMAN ARMS EXPORTS TO THE WORLD? TAKING STOCK OF THE PAST 30 YEARS SIMONE WISOTZKI // ImprInt LEIBNIZ-INSTITUT HESSISCHE STIFTUNG FRIEDENS- UND KONFLIKTFORSCHUNG (HSFK) PEACE RESEARCH INSTITUTE FRANKFURT (PRIF) Translation: Team Paraphrasis Cover: Leopard 2 A7 by Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW), October 29, 2019. © picture alliance / Ralph Zwilling - Tank-Masters.de | Ralph Zwilling Text license: Creative Commons CC-BY-ND (Attribution/NoDerivatives/4.0 International). The images used are subject to their own licenses. Correspondence to: Peace Research Institute Frankfurt Baseler Straße 27–31 D-60329 Frankfurt am Main Telephone: +49 69 95 91 04-0 E-Mail:
[email protected] https://www.prif.org ISBN: 978-3-946459-62-0 Summary The German government claims to pursue a restrictive arms export policy. Indeed, there are ample laws, provisions and international agreements for regulating German arms export policy. However, a review of 30 years of German arms export policy reveals an alarming picture. Although licences granted for arms exports to so-called third countries, which are neither part of the EU or NATO, nor equivalent states (Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and Switzerland), are supposed to be isolated cas- es with specific justifications, they have become the rule. In the past ten years alone, up to 60 per cent of German weapons of war and other military equipment has repeatedly been exported to third coun- tries. Not every arms export to third countries is problematic.