The Kick-off-meeting for the two current EU-projects implemented by the Federal Office of Economics and Export Control (BAFA) took place on Monday and Tuesday 06th and 07th March 2006 in Frankfurt and was attended by 56 international experts from 17 EU countries as well as representatives of the European Council and the European Commission.

The very successful meeting was inaugurated by the following keynote speakers: Dr. Bernhard Heitzer, president of BAFA, Dr. Andreas Strub, Office of the High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, European Council, Mr. John Mattiussi, European Commission, DG RELEX, Mr. Michael Witter, German Foreign Office and Dr. Günther Sprögel, Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology.

Speakers welcomed large attendance of qualified and experienced experts from all over Europe and they stressed that functioning export control legislation and systems within the European Union are vital to slow the spread of WMD and also emphasised that European efforts alone are not sufficient without the co-operation of third countries. With reference to the EU Strategy against the proliferation of WMD speakers outlined the EU’s commitment to strengthen export control policies and practices within EU borders and beyond, in close co-operation with partners.

Commission representatives also underlined the fact that the Pilot Project aims at granting assistance rather than at imposing the European system on third countries. Regarding the EU common list of items under control, Mrs. Herbouiller, representative of DG Trade, explained that this feature of the European system serves as a reference in many third countries already today.

Due to the high-ranking representation of all key-parties to the projects and thanks to broad support on the political and working level BAFA was able to build up a large pool of 25 national and international experts able to support BAFA’s outreach activities in all fields covered by the projects, i.e. licensing, legal assistance, customs, industry outreach, and criminal sanctions.

Following the large number of expressions of interest in co-operation with BAFA and the two projects we were able to make arrangements with interested experts on further steps ahead and to continue our close co-operation with SIPRI. With applications for the pool of experts submitted BAFA is now in the process of adjusting timeframes and setting up teams for all receiving countries, i.e. Russia, Serbia and Montenegro, UAE, Ukraine and China. Regarding details on progress made during the meeting please see the documents published on the above-mentioned website.

Keynote Speakers stressed during the meeting that the current projects will be particularly useful for future activities planned by the European Commission.

Despite the very positive feedback and commitment shown by experts during the meeting BAFA would like to reiterate its call upon member states to look for ways to support EU outreach activities, be it on a short- or a long term basis.