European Parliament Calls for an Arms Embargo against Saudi Arabia

Eldar Mamedov, LobeLog

Image (not from article) from, with caption: The European Parliament building in Strasbourg, eastern France and under the headline: More holidays for European Parliament staff? I say yes, as many as they want

Excerpt:

Last week the European Parliament (EP) adopted a non-binding resolution calling for an introduction of an EU-wide embargo on arms sales to Saudi Arabia. ...

The final decision on the embargo rests with the Council of the EU, which represents the governments of the member states. It is unlikely that it will heed the EP call. Some EU countries have close diplomatic relations with the Kingdom of Saud and are also among the top suppliers of weapons to Riyadh: UK alone has licensed arms sales to Saudi Arabia worth £6.7 billion since 2010, when David Cameron took office.

Still, the EP call for an embargo ratchets up the pressure on the Council to reconsider these dealings in light of the disastrous humanitarian and strategic consequences of the Saudi campaign in Yemen.An unprecedented mobilisation of the European civil society preceded the vote: close to 750,000 citizens signed an online petition calling for MPs to adopt the motion.

Perhaps the best evidence of the impact of this resolution lies in the intensity of the Saudi efforts to derail it. Although Saudi diplomats usually opt for low-profile, behind-the-scenes lobbying, this time they were forced to engage in a high-stakes public diplomacy to save the Kingdom from a major embarrassment. ...

Saudi diplomacy used a number of key points to convince MPs not to vote for an arms embargo . ...

In the end, in spite of the heavy lobbying campaign, MPs voted for the resolution. ...