Germany draws flak after record arms sales defy limit on exports

GERMAN arms exports in 2019 hit record highs, prompting opposition parties to criticise Berlin’s willingness to sell weapons to authoritarian regimes.

Exports of military hardware and weapons had fallen over the previous three years. However, sales have hit €7.95 billion (£6.8 billion) in the past calendar year.

The German ministry of the economy, which produced the figures, said there was a rise of 65 per cent on 2018.

Arms policy has become increasingly fraught in Germany, with the Social Democrats, the junior half of the country’s governing coalition, saying earlier this month that arms exports should be drastically reduced.

Germany is the world’s fourth largest arms exporter, after the United States, Russia and France, according to figures from the Stockholm Peace Research Institute. Hungary was the biggest customer for German arms in 2019 (€1.77billion), followed by Algeria (€843million), Egypt (€802million) and the United States (€651million). Hungary has doubled its defence spending under the leadership of Viktor Orban, the Right-wing prime minister.

The increases came despite a ban on sales to Saudi Arabia imposed after the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the journalist, and a partial restriction on sales to Turkey after the country began an offensive against Kurdish targets in northern Syria.

Members of the Greens and Left Party, who received the figures through a freedom of information request, said the increase showed that the current restrictions on arms exports were not working.

“These dramatic figures show that the entire system of export control simply does not work,” said Sevim Dagdelen of the Left Party.

Katja Keul, of the Greens, argued that arms exports should be restricted to those that have foreign policy and security, rather than profit, as the core policy objectives.

“We finally need an arms export control policy which requires the federal government to provide a foreign and security policy justification for approving arms exports,” Ms Keul said.

Ulrich Nussbaum, the economics state secretary, said that Germany already had a “restrictive and responsible arms export policy in place”.

The percentage share of weapons Germany sold to “third countries”, those involved in conflict or with questionable human rights records, fell from 52.9 to 44.2 per cent in 2019.