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France and the United States on Friday agreed to consider making arms export rules more effective, addressing a long-standing source of friction as their leaders meet for the first time in a row. on an American security pact with Great Britain and Australia. “The presidents intend to launch a strategic dialogue between the United States and France on defense trade in order to foster a common vision on access to defense markets and export issues,” said US President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron said in a joint statement after talks in Rome on the sidelines of a G20 summit.
The two governments pledged to “identify measures to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of defense export authorizations,” the statement added. France asked for clarification on a set of US arms export controls known as the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which allow Washington to block the re-export of sensitive US components embedded in foreign weapons.
French and European defense companies have criticized ITAR for hampering their exports to third countries in the past, while US arms companies have campaigned to keep the rules flexible enough to avoid restricting too tightly. their own arms sales. “We have entered into a number of bilateral cooperation agreements, several of which are essential in my opinion, first on arms exports,” Macron told reporters after meeting with Biden.
“Why? Because we need to clarify the ITAR rules or else our policies may be completely blocked. So we have opened a process to resolve the issue and work together.” A spokesperson for the State Department, which oversees ITAR’s export controls, declined to comment on the diplomatic negotiations.
There have been sporadic attempts by European countries to make their weapons ‘ITAR-free’ to circumvent the rules, but defense analysts have questioned whether this is feasible given the large amount of high-tech components made in the United States. United in the aerospace industry. Former U.S. officials say any change in France’s treatment under the rules may require a treaty, a key potential hurdle.
Tensions over ITAR controls erupted in 2012 when French defense group Thales hit a roadblock over the export of satellites launched by Chinese rockets. Negotiations to sell Dassault-built Rafale fighters from France to Egypt were reportedly delayed in 2018 due to ITAR restrictions on their missiles.
The global reach of the regulations reappeared last year when French aircraft manufacturer Airbus was fined for ITAR violations under a multinational bribery regulation.
(This story was not edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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