Brief retelling from RIA II
Advocate General of the EU Court of Justice Tamara Chapeta proposed to interpret the concept of dual-use goods as broadly as possible.
The reason for discussing the border between civilian and military goods was a dispute between the Austrian manufacturer of two-seat training aircraft and the country's authorities over the supply of aircraft to Myanmar.
Austrian authorities banned the planes, citing their potential use for military pilot training, reconnaissance and surveillance, and the risk of being used in connection with human rights abuses in Myanmar.
BRUSSELS, September 28 - RIA Novosti. Advocate General of the EU Court of Justice Tamara Chapeta, who proposed to interpret the concept of dual-use goods as broadly as possible, recalled the reasoning of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that even trouser buttons can be considered a strategic military product.
“At the height of the Cold War, Nikita Khrushchev noted that trouser buttons could be considered “dual-use” goods, since if a soldier had to hold his trousers with one hand, he would have only one free hand to shoot, turning the button into a strategic military commodity,” the general counsel’s opinion in case C-538/25 states.
Chapeta acknowledged that most people would consider the search for military uses for buttons to be an exaggeration. However, in her opinion, the concept of dual-use goods in EU legislation still “needs to be interpreted broadly so that it covers a wide range of strategic and security interests of EU states.”
The reason for discussions about the border between civilian and military goods was a dispute between the Austrian manufacturer of two-seat training aircraft and the country's authorities.
The aircraft were intended for training civil aviation and aerobatics pilots, and were not designed specifically for military purposes and were not equipped with military components. However, the end user of the equipment was to be the Myanmar Air Force.
Austrian authorities banned the supply of three aircraft, their production technology and components, citing, in particular, the possibility of using the equipment for military pilot training, reconnaissance and surveillance, as well as the risk of its use in connection with alleged human rights violations in Myanmar.
The Advocate General proposed that the EU Court of Justice recognize that in order to classify a product as a dual-use product, it is not at all necessary that it make a significant contribution to military potential.
In her opinion, even the opportunity to use a civilian training aircraft to train military pilots is enough, even if such training is no different from the training of civilian pilots.
In conclusion, a more modern example of the unexpected transformation of civilian goods into strategic ones is given. Chapeta cites a case in the mid-1980s when Iraq ordered several hundred toy car remote controls from a West German toy manufacturer to use to improve the accuracy of aging Scud missiles.
