Icon: enlarge
Patrol boats built in Germany for Egypt (November 2020)
Photo: Jens Koehler / picture alliance / Jens Koehler
The federal government tightened its arms export guidelines in 2019 - deliveries to countries outside the European Union and NATO must therefore be handled in a "restrictive" manner.
In 2020 there was indeed a decrease in approved arms exports compared to the record year 2019, from 8.015 to 5.635 billion euros.
The total includes deliveries allowed until December 10th.
In a preliminary balance sheet in mid-December, there was talk of approved arms exports of around 4.9 billion euros.
To Egypt alone, armaments worth more than 750 million euros
Around a fifth of the approved arms exports are intended for countries involved in the conflicts in Yemen or Libya.
For Egypt alone, exports of arms and military equipment worth 752 million euros were allowed until December 17.
This emerges from a response from the Federal Ministry of Economics to a request from the Bundestag member Omid Nouripour.
Larger amounts are also allowed to Qatar (305.1 million euros), the United Arab Emirates (UAE, 51.3 million euros), Kuwait (23.4 million euros) and Turkey (22.9 million euros) Armaments are delivered.
In addition, permits were issued for Jordan (1.7 million euros) and Bahrain (1.5 million euros).
This adds up to a total of 1.16 billion euros.
All of the countries mentioned play a role in at least one of the two conflicts that have been going on for years.
In Yemen, an alliance led by Saudi Arabia is fighting alongside the government there against the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.
The alliance includes the UAE, Egypt, Kuwait, Jordan and Bahrain.
However, Saudi Arabia is primarily involved in the fighting.
In the Libya conflict, Qatar and Turkey are supporting the internationally recognized government of Prime Minister Fajes al-Sarradsch in Tripoli.
The most powerful adversary of Sarradsch, General Khalifa Haftar, on the other hand, is supported by the UAE and Egypt.
There is currently a ceasefire in Libya.
Germany is committed to stopping arms deliveries to Libya and organized a summit meeting in Berlin a year ago.
But even after that, according to UN information, weapons were still delivered to Libya, including from Turkey and the UAE.
At the insistence of the Social Democrats, the Union and SPD had included a clause in the coalition agreement in 2018 on arms exports to the countries involved in the Yemen war.
Accordingly, deliveries to all states "directly" involved in the war should be stopped.
To date, the decision has only been fully implemented for Saudi Arabia, Sudan, which was temporarily involved in the Yemen kieg with ground troops, and Yemen itself.
The Greens foreign policy maker Nouripour is therefore sharply critical of the federal government.
Agreement from the coalition agreement is "not worth the paper on which it is written."
In addition, the federal government has allowed arms deliveries to countries that have broken the arms embargo against Libya.
Icon: The mirror
ulz / dpa