The Europeanisation of Arms Export Policies in the EU: Reduced or Increased Transparency and Parliamentary Scrutiny?

The arms export policies of EU member states have been increasingly Europeanised over the past two decades. This Europeanisation process has taken place at the national level, intergovernmental level and supranational level, affecting the legal basis, procedures and outcomes of decision-making on arms exports. This paper will investigate how this Europeanisation process has affected the laws, procedures and decision-making in the arms export policies of Germany, the UK and Sweden. I will argue that this process has lead to substantially increased transparency of arms export policy across the EU, but had little impact on parliamentary scrutiny. The findings also show that value diffusion of the EU transparency norm has increased transparency of arms export policy in accession countries to the EU.