The Saudi market is “closed to the Swiss arms industry”, according to Matthias Zoller, Secretary General of Swiss ASD, Swissmem’s industrial sector. He was speaking at the end of the World Defense Show in Riyadh, where Swiss military representation was conspicuous by its absence.
Swiss arms companies are no longer looking to prospect this market, because it’s too complicated,” the lobbyist told La Liberté.
The ban on supplying countries in internal or external conflict, which was passed by parliament in October 2021, is also a roadblock, in his view. The delivery of weapons systems to Saudi Arabia is banned under Swiss law.
“Above all, this law prevents us from being able to supply NATO countries,” deplores Zoller. The lobbyist says he hopes the Senate’s motion to introduce a derogation in the federal law on war materiel will open the way.
“This would correspond to the regulations in force before October 2021,” he explains. In his view, this would be a clear signal from parliament that it recognises that times have changed, even if it “will not be enough to restore the lost confidence in Switzerland”.
This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. You can find them here.
If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.
Related Stories
Popular Stories
More
AI and medicine
Can AI bridge the access to healthcare gap in sub-Saharan Africa?
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.