Country Report Netherlands April 1998 - February 1999

By: Martin Broek

We have been more effective against Dutch arms trade as in many years before, including press coverage, contact with political parties and reaching people in the peace and adjacent movements. At the same time we are confronted with to few people working at the office. For the positive developments there are two main reasons:

covering all Dutch arms trade and arms control issues, instead of having our main focus on Indonesia; and the publication of a book on Dutch arms trade in the nineties, covering export policies, the defence industry, arms trade by region and the compilation of facts and figures.

Till June 1998 we were working also a lot on international activities. Most of all with involving French groups in the EuroSatory Campaign. We visited meetings in Lyon, Paris and Lille. We are very happy with the result of the EuroSatory campaign. First of all because, while France is one of the biggest and most unscrupulous arms exporters of Western Europe there is almost no opposition in the country and at least we were able to bring French people together.

Arms trade policies of the Dutch government Arms export policies of the Dutch government are changing very quickly due to grown attention on the subject in the international fora, lobby by a wide range of NGO. s and media exposure of arms deals. The most important changes occurred on transparency and the Dutch code of conduct .

a. Transparency

b. Dutch and EU Code of conduct In the European Code of Conduct it is clearly stated, that governments who want to stick to more severe national export codes may do so. The policy of the Dutch government is to use the European and Dutch code and have the last more restrictive on the following subjects:
Undercut deliverance. s. When an export license is refused by one EU member and an other member wants to export the same kind of strategic material this state has to inform the state which refuses the license earlier. The Dutch government wants to expand this. The undercut seller has to inform all members of the EU.
Transparency. The Dutch government is aiming for a public annual report of all EU member states comparable to the Swedish report. UN-register on conventional arms. The Dutch government will try to have a new criteria on the UN-register added to the European Code of Conduct with as many EU-countries as possible. When a country is not reporting to the UN-register on Conventional arms European Union countries should refrain from exporting to those countries. The Dutch government will lobby in the European Union till September 1999 for this criteria and in any case add it to the national guidelines at this time.
OESO DAC list. For the export of surplus arms the Dutch military attaches are provided with glossy magazines to attract interest from the countries in the region they are based. Last December it was decided not to use those magazines in countries which are on the last three categories of the OECD DAC list. This means about 120 countries are not provided with information on Dutch surplus arms for sale. The effect of this must not be overstated, an estimated 15% of Dutch surplus arms went to countries on the DAC list in the nineties, the rest mainly to countries in the Middle East and members of NATO. But it means after seven years - since there is a criteria regarding development and arms trade - there is a concrete filling of the fourth Dutch (comparable with eight of the EU) criteria. It is minimal, because there is no reason to limit the application to advertising surplus arms and not to include the sale of surplus arms and new arms of the Dutch defence industry. Regions of tension. The position of the Dutch government on exports to regions of tension was already clear from the facts. The UAE, South Korea, India, Egypt, Taiwan, Qatar and Turkey are among the ten most important customers for Dutch arms. While the former Minister of Foreign Affairs was behaving like a contortionist when he was confronted with the fact that exports took place to regions of tension, the new administration is openly stating they can not work with the region of tension criteria.

c. The Dutch government is a major ally on the issue of improving export regulations on an international level, but at the same time looking at its national export record it is necessary to follow its policy very closely and go on criticising exports of arms to regions of tension and to expose arms sales which can be used for human rights violations.

Small arms

Surplus arms for sale

We are aiming for a public report of the sale of surplus arms for several reasons:

Major deals and issues of attention in the past year

Defence industry

Future activities

Reports