GPIL – German Practice in International Law

Published: 05 October 2020 Author: Stefan Talmon

In early July 2020, members of the media noticed that, unlike with all other countries and territories, including China’s special administrative region of Hong Kong, there was no flag depicted under the entry for “Taiwan” on the country information pages on the Federal Foreign Office’s website. This gave rise to – unsubstantiated – claims that the flag had been removed and replaced with a blank white rectangular banner. A reporter asked the Federal Foreign Office whether the white rectangular image under the heading “Taiwan” could be interpreted as Germany having raised the white flag in surrender to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). (more…)

Published: 02 October 2020 Author: Stefan Talmon

Throughout the year, Germany makes numerous statements on international law. Not all these statements form part of a case study presented on GPIL. However, these statements may nevertheless be of interest to international lawyers. We therefore compile these statements on a monthly basis. (more…)

Published: 30 September 2020 Author: Marco Meyer

On 8 September 2020, the parliamentary group “The Left” in Germany’s Federal Parliament submitted a motion that “Parliament reject equipping the Federal Armed Forces with armed drones (RPAS [Remotely Piloted Aircraft] / UAV [Unmanned Aerial Vehicles]) in the form of both the procurement of armed drones and the procurement of ammunition for drones already used by the Federal Armed Forces.” In a related development, on 16 September 2020, the Federal Parliament’s Defence Committee scheduled a public expert hearing on, inter alia,  the assessment of the potential arming of remotely piloted UAVs. These events came just about two and a half months after the Federal Ministry of Defence presented to the Federal Parliament a “Report on the Debate on the Possible Procurement of Armed Drones for the Federal Armed Forces” (the Report). The aim of the Report was to present “the results of the series of events organized by the Federal Ministry of Defence on the issue of the procurement of armed drones (Unmanned Aircraft Systems, UAS), in the course of which a broad and inclusive debate on international law, constitutional, ethical and political aspects took place.” (more…)

Published: 24 September 2020 Author: Stefan Talmon

Over the years, there have been a number of heated debates on the Middle East conflict at the United Nations. However, the exchange in the Security Council on 23 July 2019 between the Permanent Representative of Germany to the United Nations, Ambassador Christoph Heusgen, and the Assistant to the U.S. President and Special Representative for International Negotiations, Jason D. Greenblatt, should be remembered not just for the two countries’ different approaches to the Middle East peace process, but also, and more importantly, for their different outlooks on international law. (more…)

Published: 21 September 2020 Author: Stefan Talmon

The debate about the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland’s announcement in the House of Commons on 8 September 2020 that the UK Internal Market Bill would “break international law in a very specific and limited way” has unearthed some notable examples of breaches of international law by other States. One little known such breach concerned Germany’s disregard for the Articles of Agreement of the International Monetary Fund (the IMF Treaty) and the so-called “Smithsonian Agreement” in March 1973. The breach was admitted in a private meeting only in 1978 and became known to the general public only some 30 years later when the transcript of the meeting was declassified. (more…)

Published: 27 July 2020 Author: Stefan Talmon

Throughout the year, Germany makes numerous statements on international law. Not all these statements form part of a case study presented on GPIL. However, these statements may nevertheless be of interest to international lawyers. We therefore compile these statements on a monthly basis. (more…)

Published: 23 July 2020 Authors: Mirjam Reiter and Stefan Talmon

Dr. Moncef Kartas, a Tunisian-German dual national, had been a member and arms expert of the United Nations Panel of Experts on Libya since May 2016. The Panel had been established pursuant to Security Council resolution 1973 (2011) to investigate allegations of violations of the arms embargo and other sanctions imposed on Libya. On 26 March 2019, shortly before the Panel was to submit an interim report to the Security Council, Dr. Kartas was arrested on espionage charges upon arrival in Tunis. He was accused of gathering intelligence information concerning national security through interference, interception and audio surveillance and disclosing that information to foreign governments. It was argued, in particular, that he possessed special radio devices used to track civil and military aviation, the use of which required official authorisation in Tunisia. (more…)

Published: 20 July 2020 Author: Stefan Talmon

The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh dates back to the late 1980s, when the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic started to make territorial claims against its fellow Soviet Socialist Republic. The Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, with its capital, Stepanakert, was part of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, but its population was approximately 75 per cent ethnic Armenian (145,000) and 25 per cent ethnic Azeri (40,688). Inter-ethnic violence broke out in early February 1988 after calls for the unification of Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia. In July 1988, the Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) rejected Armenian demands for unification. In January 1989, the USSR Government placed Nagorno-Karabakh under Moscow’s direct rule, but this did not end the clashes between Armenians and Azeris. During the disintegration of the USSR, Azerbaijan declared its independence on 18 October 1991. A month later, the Azerbaijani parliament in Baku annulled Nagorno-Karabakh’s status of autonomous oblast. (more…)

Published: 16 July 2020 Author: Rohan Sinha

Between 1998 and 2010, the Hellenic Republic issued various sovereign bonds, which were subject to Greek law and traded as book-entry securities at the Athens stock exchange. These securities were registered in the Greek Central Bank’s securities settlement system and could be purchased by participants in the securities settlement system, upon which the participants became the holders and creditors of these bonds. According to Greek law, the participants could grant rights to those bonds to third-party investors, although the transaction by which those rights were granted was effective only between the parties concerned and expressly did not operate to the benefit or detriment of the Hellenic Republic. (more…)

Published: 14 July 2020 Author: Stefan Talmon

Over the last few years, German-Russian relations have not been at their best. For example, in April/May 2015, the German Federal Parliament experienced a serious cyberattack during which 16 gigabytes of data, confidential documents and e-mails were stolen. The attack also affected the parliamentary office of Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel. The Federal Prosecutor General launched an investigation on suspicion of espionage against Germany on behalf of the intelligence service of a foreign power which on 29 April 2020 led the Investigating Magistrate of the Federal Court of Justice to issue an international arrest warrant for Russian national Dimitri Badin. There was credible evidence that the accused was working for the Russian military intelligence service GRU at the time of the cyberattack. During parliamentary question time on 13 May 2020, Chancellor Merkel implicated Russia in this “outrageous” cyberattack and accused the country of pursuing a “strategy of hybrid warfare, which includes warfare in connection with cyber disorientation and distortion of facts.” (more…)