Brussels, 17/05/2016 (Agence Europe) - Meeting in a working group on Friday 13 May to prepare the ground for the work on the directive on firearms, the advisers to the Permanent Representatives with responsibility for Justice and Home Affairs seemed to prefer the option of drawing up an exhaustive list of weapons exempted from the scope of the directive, rather than a list with a series of example weapons, a more flexible option but one likely to create uncertainty, a source reported on Tuesday 17 May.
At this stage, the discussions appear fastidious. For instance, France is reported to have proposed exemptions for weapons used for sports shooting. However, certain member states are reported already to have expressed their concerns in view of the fact that in some states, 90% of sports shooters own semiautomatic weapons, a source told us. Belgium, for its part, is reported to have put forward the “grandfather” clause, which would remove certain weapons currently owned by collectors from the scope of application of the directive. Several member states, however, are inclined to oppose this, among them Ireland, Spain and the United Kingdom, all countries which have considerable experience of acts of terrorism committed using weapons circulating on their territory.
On the other hand, the advisers do not seem to have made much progress on the question of defining semiautomatic weapons, a source of stalemate at the most recent meeting of the Committee of Permanent Representatives (Coreper II) on 11 May (see EUROPE 11549). At that meeting, the Dutch Presidency proposed to work on the basis of the magazine capacity. “But the problem is that the capacity can vary enormously for the same weapon”, a source close to the dossier told us, pointing out for instance that it is possible to tape several magazines together, increasing capacity from 40 to 120.
The “Genval” expert group, which is due to meet on Thursday 19 May, will tackle the question of the Belgian clause and the online sales of weapons and munitions. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)