Why is Slovenia the only EU country to ban arms trade with Israel?

In the absence of a consensus at European level, Slovenia is going it alone.

On Thursday, it became the first EU country to ban all arms trade with Israel, including transit and imports.

In a press release, the Slovenian government explicitly outlined its concerns about the humanitarian situation in Gaza and denounced the EU's inability to adopt such a measure because of "internal disagreements."

The decision is above all symbolic, since the Slovenian government says it has not issued any arms export permits to Israel since October 2023 because of the conflict.

This decision is intended to intensify the pressure on the Israeli state to put an end to the war in Gaza.

"All measures are on the table, we support, as we have done in the past, the suspension of the accession agreement with Israel, as well as trade sanctions and an arms embargo, sanctions against certain settlers, certain ministers and the Israeli government that supports violence", declared Tanja Fajon, Slovenia's Minister of Foreign Affairs, on 15 July in Brussels.

"All measures must be taken as soon as possible, until there is a ceasefire, until the violence has stopped, until we have a resolution between the two countries", she added.

Falling sales

Other European countries such as Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands have not gone as far as Slovenia, but have reduced arms sales to Israel.

Belgium officially banned arms exports to Israel following the 2008-2009 Gaza war.

In the Netherlands, the Court of Appeal in The Hague annulled the export of F-35 spare parts to Israel in February 2024.

The 2013 Arms Trade Treaty prohibits states from transferring weapons that will be used to commit genocide or crimes against humanity.

In 2008, EU countries also undertook to refuse transfers of technology and military equipment that could be used to prolong armed conflicts.

"For European states, there is an obligation not only not to export equipment that could be used to commit crimes in Gaza, but also not to export equipment that could be used to maintain the land, air or naval dimensions of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories," Samuel Longuet, a researcher at the Groupe de recherche et d'information sur la paix et la sécurité (GRIP), told Euronews.

"So this covers virtually all the military equipment that could be used by the Israeli army."

Continued exports

Meanwhile, European exports of military equipment to Israel continue.

Some countries state that the parts are only assembled in Israel or that they are used as training equipment, and not in Gaza.

"The work of several human rights associations in Italy, as well as the Italian investigative press, revealed that the Italian government had just suspended the granting of new export licences, but everything that had been authorised before 7 October 2023 was still going to Israel. In particular parts for training aircraft," explains Longuet.

The transfer of dual-use technologies, which can be used for both civilian and military purposes, also poses a problem.

In Belgium, the Flemish region allowed a local company to export "screens that ended up in the control cabins of Israeli drones that were used to bomb a humanitarian convoy a few months ago," the researcher said.

"The argument put forward by the Flemish government at the time, before 7 October, in March 2023, was that this was a generic technology, a screen that could be found, yes, in a drone control cabin, but also in anything else. And so in this case, it didn't require the company supplying these screens to apply for an export licence, since it wasn't strictly speaking a military technology", he points out.

The United States is by far the leading supplier of weapons to Israel. It accounts for two-thirds of Israeli arms imports, with Germany and Italy coming in second and third places.

Germany mainly sells frigates and torpedoes, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

"What we export is a little bit of everything in fact. Parts that can be used on Israeli ships, so equipment that will be used in naval systems. We also supply parts for training aircraft," says Longuet.

"The UK and Italy, for example, export parts for the Italian M-346 aircraft used to train future Israeli fighter pilots," he explains.

At the European level, an arms embargo is unlikely to succeed. It would have to be approved unanimously by the EU Council.

However, Longuet says countries such as Germany, Hungary and the Czech Republic, staunch supporters of Israel, would likely block it.