Over the course of last months, the Government of the Czech Republic has significantly tightened its arms export policy towards Ukraine. As the issuing of licenses to Czech exporters of military material reflects – while the value of approved licenses for all types of military material (not weapons as such) totaled 111 million CZK in 2013, the overall value dropped to 8 million CZK in 2014. We confirm that several licenses issued prior to the escalation of the Ukrainian crisis in 2014 were also suspended as part of this effort.

In relation to the “EU arms embargo” towards Ukraine, it has to be emphasized that what the EU Council adopted in February 2014 was a political agreement on restrictive measures on material that can be used for internal repression. This measure addressed a specific political context – the events taking place on the Maidan – and was nullified already in July 2014 given the dynamics of political events that followed. Moreover, it is worth noting that although this measure was never transformed into a legally binding measure, the Czech Republic applied it to the letter.

The export control policy of the Czech Government towards Ukraine remains very restrictive. As a result, the Czech Republic has not been supplying any weapon systems since the crisis broke out in the summer of 2014 and has not issued a single license for export of weapons in this time frame. The Czech Government will continue to reflect the developments in Ukraine in limiting the export of military material to this region. Relevant ministries (MFA, MIT, MoD, MoI) on a regular basis assess and decide on each license application individually, including licenses issued before 2014 (i.e. also before the crises in Ukraine) under the previous Government. We can confirm that several licenses issued before 2014 were suspended as a result of this process.

The Ministries are not in a position to comment on details of individual cases give their obligations under  §31 of the Act nr. 38/1994 Col.