Deputies, Senators’ Deputies: Stop!
We want to combine our voice with that of many women and men, coordinations of many movements and associations, such as Italian peace and disarmament network who relaunched the appeal “Enough favors for arms merchants! We stop the emptying of the law 185/90 “.
For some time we have asked not to upset the law 185 that regulates the export of Italian weapons. Just last year these days we were in Rome to remember “The commitment of Catholics in favor of law 185/90. An appeal to the consciousness of parliamentarians against the false realism of the war».
We wrote it then and we repeated it today, as you are discussing the changes to be approached to the approval of the classroom: «Law 185 of 1990, which regulates the export of weapons, is a great conquest of Italian civil society which saw part of the Christian associations engaged in the front row in the “against death merchants” campaign. The appeal launched for that mobilization started by a realistic fact: “Italian weapons kill all over the world”. (…) The attempt to proceed with the progressive dismantling of the law 185/90 seems to be initiated to fulfill (…). Law 185 has allowed, for example, thanks to the pressure of active citizenship, to interrupt, from 2019 to May 2023, departure from our country of thousands of missiles and bombs intended to be used in the disastrous conflict in place in Yemen».
The bill you are discussing today intends: to limit the application of prohibitions on exports of armaments; minimize information to Parliament and civil society; And above all, limit the information contained by the annual government report, deleting the documentation regarding the operations carried out by the credit institutions about the import and export of Italian weapons and military systems.
These changes empty the content of law 185. It would be a very serious decision.
Deputies and senators, we ask you, we beg you, do not empty the law 185/90 in its profound meaning. We ask you to remember and keep the work of civil society that led to the approval of this law that implements constitutional principles. We ask you in the name of the common humanity that repudiates the war.
With the hope that this appeal will be collected, we remain available for any type of comparison and in -depth analysis.
Rome, February 7, 2025.
Giuseppe Notarstefano, president of the Italian Catholic Action
Emiliano Manfredonia, President of ACLI
Matteo Fadda, President of the Community Association Pope John XXIII
Formosa Cristiana and Gabriele Bardo, Managers Movement of Italy Focolari
Msgr. Giovanni Ricchiuti, President of the Pax Christi Italia Movement
Roberta Vincini and Francesco Scoppola, Presidents National Committee Agesci
