The dispute over arms exports to Saudi Arabia charged the Grand coalition for weeks, but now he’s threatening to run seriously out of control. The Federal security Council, the secret meetings of the export control Committee of the Cabinet, broke up on Wednesday without agreement on whether the export is due to expire stop or, as it calls for the SPD to another half-year will be extended. The positions were hardened “on both sides”, reported then a coalition politician with the discussions familiar. Next, the political leadership of the coalition to resolve the dispute. First contacts were there already. A summit on the crisis seems not to be excluded. Because not much time remains: does not Come to a compromise, the stop on Sunday without a whimper.
The Union would be quite right. She had not to give in to in the coalition agreement of the claim of the SPD, to sell weapons of war to countries that are directly involved in the war in Yemen. The complete export stop in the direction of the Riad was in the previous November as a reaction to the murder of the journalist Gamal Kashoggi imposed.
He also relates to goods which are not suitable anyway for the war effort. The Peene-Werft in Wolgast about slides since December. Of an order for 35 patrol boats for the Saudi coast guard have so far delivered only 15, four are still under construction. It relates to all exports, including pre-approved, sits the owner, the Lürssen group, for the time being, the rest of the finished boats.
pressure from London and Paris
This stop was actually three weeks ago. Because the coalition partners could not agree even then, they gave a new deadline to the 31. March. But instead of working on the approach, apart controlled you. The Kashoggi affair, it’s not. Christ – like social-Democrats election campaign as an example of the process in the kick-off for Europe: How do you think’s with arms exports?
the CDU and the CSU, led by their new Vorleuten Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer and Markus Söder, in the name of European cooperation, in fact, a loosening of the German rules. Europe need closer military and military-technical cooperation, the required rules for Europe – wide export and the could not simply follow the German guidelines.
in fact, partners such as the UK and France to make massive pressure, both in principle and in the specific case. Because of the German stop also community projects are affected, where sometimes only a few parts made in Germany are installed.
On Wednesday, France was also attended by foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian in Berlin at the meeting of the Federal Cabinet. The friendship visit was the Premiere in the framework of the Aachen Treaty. Whether Le Drian addressed a delicate topic, don’t want to say, government spokesman Steffen Seibert. But France’s Ambassador, Anne-Marie Descôtes had already made the day before, completely undiplomatic clear how one thinks in Paris on the German arms export policy. The rules are not just strict, but for the Partner simply “unpredictable” – a game ball the “current German domestic policy”.
Since Andrea was Nahles addressed feel. However, the SPD Boss has hardly come yet to the game room. Only on Saturday the social Democrats had decided at their Europe Convention unanimously: no weapons deliveries into crisis regions and dictatorships.
coalition compromise is hard
Both of these exclusion criteria apply not only in the opinion of the SPD-Left Ralf Stegner fully for Saudi Arabia. Also Nahles itself to the effect dying for the rejection in her speech: “as Long as in Yemen every week, people and children go hungry, as long as Saudi Arabia is because the war party, as long as no weapons deliveries may go from Germany there.” In front of the SPD group in the Bundestag, she had asked you specifically to extend the Export ban to a year and a half.
Thus, the party boss, the way to a coalition compromise very difficult, possibly even installed. Although mixed solutions were ventilated to prohibit so, for example, national exports will continue to be, the delivery of European co-productions to agree to, but under certain conditions. Theoretically, a boundary would not be there, where the German share of a device is higher than, for example, 30 percent. But all of that is in the SPD as not employable.
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weapons for Saudi Arabia Grand coalition, no agreement on arms export stop
At the end of Nahles could stay only one way out: to let The Export stopped with a loud Protest to expire, the debt of the Union, claiming that the issue in the election campaign to play. But that would be a risky tactic. Because it raises again the fundamental question of why social Democrats to remain in coalition, they are not even able to prevent the Saudi-upgraded Regime.