The multilevel system of arms trade law

• Applicant: Dr. Isabelle Ley
• Subject Area: Public Law
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 501628580

Arms export regulation is today as topical as it is under-researched. Many states, including Germany, react to current external policy challenges (Russian and Chinese aggressions in different world regions, conflicts in the Middle East and Mediterranean, Brexit / AUKUS, problems within NATO) with a rise in defence investments which, in turn, triggers an increase in the global volume of arms trade. Germany ranks on number four of the list of weapons exporting states worldwide. These developments sparked the international regulation of weapons export in the past years: In 2014, the Arms Trade Treaty entered into force. The European Commission has taken a number of steps to extend the internal market logic to the intra-European trade in arms. Next to the issuance of several directives, it created the European defence fonds and established a new General Directorate “Defence Industry and Space”. In 2017, the “Permanent Structured Cooperation” in the area of security and defence (PESCO) was founded in order to create an industrial base for arms production to further Europe’s “strategic autonomy” from the US / NATO. In a Franco-German treaty both countries stipulated guidelines for the export of weapons. Finally, Germany decided upon different measures to make the export of arms more transparent and less prone to abuse. Despite all these developments the field of arms export has not been well researched by historians, political scientists and legal scholars: During the Cold War the scholarly interest was focused on the control of nuclear weapons. After 1989 the regulation of arms got less attention than more general questions of a peaceful democratization and constitutionalisation of international relations and the European integration. Against this backdrop, this project will reconstruct the emerging multi-level system of arms export regulation between the international, the European and the national levels to be able to address more concrete questions: How do political and judicial safeguards of arms export work? Is it, in the German case, convincing that a parliamentary mandate is necessary to send troops abroad while the decision about the export of arms is made in secret executive committees? Is there any judicial remedy for those who may be threatened by exported weapons? Which limits to arms export result from the Franco-German cooperation? It is the aim of this project to answer these questions from the perspective of national, European and international law in a coherent manner and to define institutional paths for a more democratic and better judicially controlled development of this field of law.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants