Schiebel Group

I want to start with Professor Martin Tribus on what the exemption in Article 346 is supposed to do in the first place.

So before, we have, since 1999, a court of justice case law with what I call Spanish weapons, with Augusta, with Schiebel aircraft, and a couple of cases against almost any member state on the planet, which suggests that actually Article 346 has to be interpreted narrowly.

Member states have to specifically invoke the provision and the use of the provision will be subject to judicial review.

And then the Commission has an interpretive communication in which it sets out actually altogether six steps of analysis here, which I will not repeat, just the main important ones.