Arms sales to European countries have fallen by over 20 percent since the financial crisis, according to a report released on Monday (18 March). An annual survey by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute ( ...

Burma’s president Thein Sein is in Brussels on Tuesday (5 March) to convince EU leaders to drop sanctions despite allegations of ongoing human rights violations and escalating sectarian violence. The EU suspended ...

The European Union on Thursday (28 February) agreed to supply Syria’s opposition, the Syrian National Coalition, with "non-lethal military equipment." The amended arms embargo will allow for “the provision of non-lethal ...

The head of the EU training mission to Mali (EUTM) says the EU should run a parallel programme to better equip and arm Malian troops. “The European Union needs to invest today in the equipping of the Malian army and not ...

A senior French military officer has said France is better off without Nato or EU help to "reconquer" north Mali. Colonel Michel Goya, a serving officer and an expert at the Institut de Recherche Strategique de l'Ecole ...

A top counter-terrorism official has said the EU military training mission in Mali will increase the risk of revenge attacks in Europe. Asked by EUobserver on Tuesday (22 January) if France's intervention in Mali could ...

EU foreign ministers on Thursday (17 January) are holding a crisis meeting on Mali, after one British citizen was killed and 41 internationals taken hostage at a British-Norwegian gas plant in Algeria in retaliation ...

Catherine Ashton's mandate is to provide leadership on foreign policy and human rights. She has failed, however, to ensure a collective EU voice for bringing the crimes in Syria before the International Criminal Court ( ...

The UN has hired mild-mannered former European Commission and Italian leader Romano Prodi to help pacify west Africa. UN chief Ban Ki Moon and President Francois Hollande of France, a former colonial power in the region ...

Chinese leader Wen Jiabao has bluntly told the EU to drop its ban on arms sales. He made the call in his opening remarks to top EU officials Herman Van Rompuy and Jose Manuel Barroso at a summit in a stately home in ...

A mere two weeks ago the name Ramil Safarov was meaningless to most people. Today he is the cause of a diplomatic storm between Azerbaijan, Armenia and Hungary which has sucked in the US, Russia and the EU and deepened ...

The EU's foreign service is considering whether to temporarily close its office in Benghazi after the killing of the US ambassador to Libya in the city on Tuesday (11 September). The small EU unit, a secure building ...

The surge of Syrian refugees into Turkey has spooked Greece into deploying 1,881 additional guards on its border. "The deployment of the above border guards has begun today. They will be stationed there [in the Evros ...

EU countries will stop buying Iranian oil on 1 July after nuclear negotiators left talks in Moscow empty-handed. "The Iranians seemed to be under the impression that if they made some sort of vague undertaking, ...

EU diplomats disagree with the US and Israel on whether Iran should join a Contact Group on Syria. UN emissary Kofi Annan last week called for the formation of a body akin to the one which steered events in the Balkans ...

The string of recent killings in the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict is nothing unusual, EU diplomats in the region say. Armenia last week accused Azerbaijan of killing four of its soldiers in cross border raids. Azerbaijan ...

The Stockholm-based arms-control institute, Sipri, released a report on Monday (4 June) claiming nuclear warheads are fewer in number but are increasingly more sophisticated. The United States, Russia, the United ...

I would like to take issue with EUobserver over two articles by Andrew Rettman entitled "Accidental war waiting to happen on EU periphery" on 14 May and "Azerbaijani lobbyists target EU opinion" on 24 May. When writing ...

French leader Francois Hollande has said military action in Syria is possible if the UN agrees, as EU countries expelled ambassadors. He spoke on national TV on Tuesday (29 May) following UN confirmation that Syrian ...

Azerbaijan beats up journalists, jails political opponents and bulldozes people's homes to build shopping malls, according to the latest resolution by the European Parliament. It is run "in a manner similar to the ...

If or when a full-blown conflict erupts between Armenia and Azerbaijan, it will probably begin like this. According to a senior source in the Armenian defence ministry, on 27 April Azerbaijani troops sneaked over the ...

The EU's external action service (EEAS) plans to spend up to €50 million on private security guards for its Afghanistan mission over the next four years. It unveiled the tender on Thursday (10 May), saying the money ...

Firms in the UK, France, Italy, Sweden, Germany, Spain and Europe's own European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company made around €75 billion from selling weapons in 2010. In broader terms, the world arms trade is ...

EU firms have joined the gold rush on military and civilian unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). But ethical and legal questions dog the technology. The global UAV market is worth $6 billion (€4.6bn) a year and will hit $12 ...

He said the surveys do not promote peace and are part of a decades-long "attempt to undermine [Israel's] very legitimacy." He added: "Giving the accurate picture helps when looking for a solution."

Nuclear expert, the head of the Iran delegation in the European Parliament and Finnish Green MEP Tarja Cronberg is against an EU oil embargo on Iran. She says power-politics could lead to military clashes in the Strait ...

The EU recently extended its sanctions on Syria but with the crackdown against protesters continuing, MEPs have been asking Syrian opposition groups what more can be done to pressurise President Bashar Al Assad. ...

Publication of UN evidence on Tuesday (8 November) that Iran is making nuclear weapons and recent Israeli war-talk is designed to stimulate new sanctions but is not a prelude to military strikes, a French expert has ...