Export authorisations linked to mergers in Germany

Germany's Economic Minister Siegmar Gabriel has been reported over the past few weeks as wanting to implement a strict ban on defense exports (although Germany was the world's third largest arms exporter between 2009 and 2013 according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) and encouraging German land armaments group Krauss-Maffei Wegmann to merge with compatriot Rheinmetall rather than with France's Nexter.

But at the annual French Summer Defense University -– hosted this year by the Air Force in Bordeaux -– a German defense expert told me that the media had got it all wrong. What Gabriel wants, I was told, is to put a ban on German defense exports until a transparent system for approving such exports is set up to replace the current secretive approval process used by the Federal Security Council. And why? Because one of two of the conditions for the merger between KMW and Nexter is that Germany should have a defense exports authorization system open to public scrutiny.

And once this is in place, the expert told me, the road would be open to a merger not only between KMW and Nexter but also with Rheinmetall, thereby creating a European leader in the land armaments business: a sort of Groundbus to match Airbus.