Deactivation of weapons from the perspective of European Union and Kosovo

• Authors: Suchanek, Paweł

Abstracts

EN

Despite existing regulations on weapon acquisition, possession, trade, transfer over the border on EU and UN level, for a long time an issue of deactivation had not been addressed by EU in a comprehensive way until December 2015, the aftermath of the series of terrorist attacks in several EU Member States. . For some years after the amended Firearms Directive 2008/15/EC had come into force, except for the framework guidelines, there was neither a sense of common understanding for the concept of deactivation, nor definite, technical requirements for all EU Member States. In result, deactivated firearms that were legally transferred or illegally trafficked within EU territory were very likely to be reactivated by criminals and re-introduced into illicit weapon market. The article describes the path that has finally led to the establishment of the EU requirements on deactivation, presenting on the other hand, the struggle for the set-up of sound anti-reactivation provisions by one of the newest countries on the European map, that is Kosovo. This young state has had to overcome the post conflict situation and has started to introduce a versatile control over the civilian weapon market. As Kosovo has been strictly cooperating with EU and UN on public security related issues, the topic of regulating the weapon market became one of the issues of legitimate concern both for Brussels and Pristina. In case of the deactivation, Kosovo authorities assisted by international experts, prepared comprehensive solutions in their domestic legislation, which came into force long before the establishment of EU common guidelines on deactivation standards and techniques for ensuring that deactivated firearms are rendered irreversibly inoperable set in December 2015.

Keywords

EN

Kosovo; Balkan region; deactivation of firearms; arms related crime; weapons; EU legislation

• Publisher: Wyższa Szkoła Policji w Szczytnie
• Journal: Internal Security
• Year: 2016
• Volume: 8(1)
• Pages: 123-136

Contributors

author

Suchanek, Paweł

Identifiers

DOI

10.5604/20805268.1231546