Brussels, 31/01/2000 (Agence Europe) - The second annual report on implementation of the European Union programme for the prevention of illegal conventional arms traffic and action against this traffic (programme adopted on 26 June 1997) stresses that, during the second year of implementation, the Member States made active efforts to implement the main lines of he programme and to diffuse its principles. The report, published on 19 January in the Official Journal (C15), stresses that it is increasingly necessary to address issues related to the illicit trafficking of small arms and light weapons and their proliferation, mainly in regions where there are conflicts and where there have been recent crises, and that the EU Member States contributed to the solution to this problem by implementing national projects and actions under the aegis of the Union, and also by actively participating in work of international organisations (and in particular projects such as UN action in former Yugoslavia and the draft UN protocol on firearms), as well as regional projects, mainly in Africa. The report stresses that, in over to avoid duplication, the different working groups of the EU which deal with such matters should coordinate their efforts more. It considers that, in future, the EU could envisage grouping into a single document the annual report on joint EU action concerning small arms and light weapons, and the EU programme for combating the illegal trade in conventional weapons.
The report notes initiatives taken to fight against the illegal trafficking in weapons:
within and into the EU. The document indicates that several countries (such as France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden) has set up interministerial committees or ad hoc groups in order to coordinate this fight, that Finland is training customs agents in border areas, and that the EU "Police Cooperation working group" has endorsed a route policing project for combating illicit trafficking of firearms within the Member States.
in other regions. The report notes above all the Council declaration of 18 June 1999 on the trafficking of weapons to the African Great Lakes region. The co-sponsoring by the EU of the UN Resolution "to convene an international conference on the illicit arms trade in all its aspects no later than 2001"; financial aid by Sweden, Finland, Belgium and the Netherlands with a view to a global campaign on small arms and light weapons; aid from the United Kingdom and the Netherlands to a South African NGO for the development of legislation in South Africa; economic support by France, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden to the moratorium of the Economic Community of Western African States (ECOWAS) on the import, export and manufacture of small arms and light weapons; the co-funding by Portugal of a seminar organised in June 1998 in Libreville on the consolidation of peace thanks to disarmament; and financial aid from Sweden to the activities of the United Nations Lima Regional Centre for disarmament.