Dr Maria Garcia-Alonso was a guest lecturer at the Third EU Summer University on Strategic Trade Control and Non-Proliferation in Alpbach, Austria from 9-16 August. The event was part of the EU Partner-to-Partner Export Control Programme for dual use goods (https://export-control.jrc.ec.europa.eu/). The European Union is a long-standing provider of capacity-building activities aimed at the overall strengthening of export controls worldwide.
In her lecture entitled ‘Economic consequences of non-export control’, Maria highlighted the different objectives of the parties involved in the trading of arms and dual use goods, and illustrated the need for effective and credible international co-ordination. She also described some interesting trends regarding the changing nature of trade in these goods and the challenges involved when regulating in a changing technological and security environment.
Overall, the event explored examples of current international developments and helped to understand emerging issues for strategic export controls such as additive manufacturing, synthetic genomics and drones. In particular, new geopolitical challenges, the current difficult security situation in various regions of the world as well as challenges in enhancing the global governance of export controls on dual use items were touched upon or discussed in greater detail during the sessions. The concerns posed by the present situation in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea were discussed. In this regard, a further fine-tuning of export control modalities was deemed as necessary for deterring or halting the various sources of WMD proliferation.