the relationship between The German arms companies and the Federal government is more confrontational. Two years ago, the Association of arms companies and the Federal government, especially the Ministry of defence, a kind of code of conduct had been agreed, with the help of which the companies wanted to get more planning security and previous notions about what political plans in the future could affect their production, their exports, while the Ministry hoped to be able to greater standardisation and better agreements in the future, at own orders to save costs. The conclusion of that agreement was at the same time, an attempt to ease the previously tense relationship between the arms industry and politics.
John Age
Political correspondent in Berlin.
F. A. Z.
These tensions had their origin mainly in the behavior of the Federal Economics Ministry under the then Minister Sigmar Gabriel (SPD). Gabriel wanted to put through the reduction of arms exports in General, of a political character. This he managed while not General, since the annual export volume of Germany’s arms industry, depending on the backlog and type of goods delivered vary greatly: but in individual fields, Gabriel continued to sign. For example, a clear reduction of the export of small arms, i.e. rifles, pistols, rocket-propelled grenades, which have the control of whether these weapons remain in the hands of the recipient, nature, he managed to be particularly difficult.
damage claims
Gabriel has also led for the first time, the possibility for German authorities to control in the recipient countries, the whereabouts of the exported goods. Attention, Gabriel was attracted in the year 2014 also with the arrangement to stop the supply of equipment for a combat training centre to Russia. The Export of this virtual military training ground by the company, Rheinmetall has long been previously approved by the Federal security Council – the Cabinet Committee, to which all exports of military goods are available for approval. To him, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Interior, defence, economic and development aid the Ministry in addition to the Chancellery. Gabriel announced to stop the export to Russia together with the Russian policy of Aggression and annexation of the Crimea. However, it took then a long time, up to the policy announcement of the Minister was executed by a bureaucratic act.
Rheinmetall, which had provided at the time of Gabriel’s announcement to their equipment and services to the value of 120 million euros, complained and then on damages. On the Details of the initiated court proceedings, both sides wrapped in Silence, but it came to be, as younger releases of the company suggests, not to a final judicial clarification. At the recent annual General meeting, the company informed at any time on request that it had received for the damage from the stopped Export of the combat training centre no compensation payments.