The European Parliament is pushing for better control of the EU’s arms exports. MEP Bodil Valero explains why.

defence (0821)

human rights

https://api.multimedia.europarl.europa.eu/documents/20125/11314141/NI01-PUB-170918-ARMS-EN.srt

The main objective of my proposal is really to raise awareness

but not only the parliamentarians, but also the decision makers.

It has to come to the Council, to the Commission, to the public.

What's going on and where our arms are used.

but the problem is that the countries do not fulfil them.

In the end, we want to open a discussion on making a change

when it comes to the human rights  Criteria.

All countries are selling arms to Saudi Arabia.

The situation for human rights, we all know how it is.

it's totally fine to sell radar systems or submarines or things like that.

There is also a demand from the public opinion

that we cannot continue to sell arms to Saudi Arabia.

We remind about the embargo we already proposed in the European Parliament

But we would like that to be extended to other authoritarian states also.

And now we have a big industry, of course, and they have a lot of high technology

that we can need for other threats that we are facing at the moment.

We have cyber threats, we have climate change.

I do understand that there are a lot of people working there,

but I believe also that people in the industry want to be proud of what they are doing.

Are you proud if you know that what you are doing is killing people in other countries?