On Wednesday 29 November, the Council of the European Union approved a negotiating mandate on the revision of the European rules on the import, export and transit of firearms for civilian use (see EUROPE 13052/10) in order to begin discussions with the European Parliament. The new rules are designed to close the loopholes in firearms trafficking, where 35 million illegal firearms are believed to be in civilian hands in the EU and around 630,000 are listed as stolen or lost in the Schengen Information System.
The Council made few major changes to the Commission’s proposal. It added a licence procedure for temporary imports and exports of firearms. Member States have retained the option of maintaining their existing national authorisation systems, provided that they are interconnected with the licencing system set up to digitise procedures.
The Council specified that the military firearms excluded from the scope of the export proposal would be those on the EU Common Military List.
See the Council’s policy paper: https://aeur.eu/f/9v0 (Original version in French by Isalia Stieffatre)