The organizations promoting the “Enough favors for arms dealers” campaign have expressed strong concern about the rumors according to which the Government intends to question and worsen Law 185/90 on the control of arms exports, reopening the debate in the Chamber on the government bill already approved in the Senate which would overturn the Law.
Thus the Italian Peace and Disarmament Network relaunched the campaign to defend it, supported by over two hundred realities from the associative and Catholic world, including Libera, the Acli, Pax Christi. As Tonio Dell’Olio writes on Mosaico di Pace“the fear is that, between cancellations and silences, transparency will be undermined: the names of the “armed banks” will disappear, the reference to human rights will weaken, the center of gravity will shift from technical evaluations to opaque political choices. Thus the barrier risks being lowered, while production grows and the market seeks new outlets. It is not just a rule to be defended, but a promise of democratic control”.
According to the Italian Peace and Disarmament Network, “the proposed changes, in continuity with other interventions that have already weakened controls at European level and in several member states, risk making arms exports easier and less controlled. This would happen when the military industry has increased its production capacity and the rearmament funds, currently growing rapidly in the European Union, have dried up or stabilized. It is at that moment that we will try to push even more on exports to non-EU markets, reducing constraints and controls. This is why it is essential to defend a law that guarantees transparency and responsibility, especially towards authoritarian states, countries at war or in areas of high tension”.
“One of the concrete objectives of this reform”, continues the Network, “is the cancellation, within the official government report, of the Table on the so-called “armed banks”, i.e. the list of credit institutions directly involved in arms export operations. In a phase in which funds destined for weapons and related economic activities are increasing enormously, reducing transparency on who provides financial services that make this foreign trade possible is extremely serious: it means making money flows more opaque and favoring economic interests that thrive on instability international and on the increase of conflicts. Less capacity for control and less information transparency towards public opinion mean more space for action for those who intend to profit from wars”.
The Campaign reiterates that “it is not enough to defend the system of law 185/90, but on the contrary it is necessary to strengthen it”. “We ask that any reform explicitly take into account the Arms Trade Treaty, that the role of inter-ministerial bodies is not transformed into a simplification in favor of authorizations but remains based on stringent political and technical evaluations, that the annual report to Parliament be made more complete, readable and transparent on the data relating to the recipient countries, types of materials, authorizations and services, that the part relating to the relationships between the banking system and the military industry not be eliminated and that the coordination and monitoring tools be preserved public as well as the possibility of acquiring information on respect for human rights also from independent civil society bodies”.
“The campaign”, concludes Tonio Dell’Olio, “will not remain in the buildings: it will cross territories and consciences, asking that the economy does not lose peace as a horizon. In short, today more than ever it is necessary to do something. All of us. Together”.
