In response to the ongoing Ukraine war, Konstantin von Notz, a security expert for the Green Party in the Bundestag, has called for the establishment of a pan-European weapons registry and enhanced data exchange mechanisms to combat the illegal arms trade.
This proposal follows extensive investigations revealing increasing evidence that munitions and firearms from Ukrainian battlefields are vanishing only to surface on the black market. Security experts suspect that some of these weapons may also be those supplied by international support nations to Ukraine.
Von Notz criticized the supply countries for being inadequately prepared to handle this scenario. He argues that common databases containing information about all weapons shipped to Ukraine are essential-essentially a comprehensive EU-wide arms register. Furthermore, he urged the German government to centrally collect data on all weapons found, stating that there must be a shared screening process to account for every discovery.
Joining in the call for better oversight, terrorism expert Hans-Jakob Schindler of the Counter Extremism Project echoed these concerns to “Report Mainz.” He noted that there is currently no overview tracking the serial numbers of weapons delivered by Europe to Ukraine, making it impossible to trace their whereabouts. Schindler criticized EU member states for failing to learn from past conflicts, observing that “our curve of learning as a society, also as Germany, is 100 percent horizontal.”
When approached by the magazine, the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) confirmed that tracking weapons is significantly complicated by “missing markings on firearms or gaps in registers or by incomplete/erroneous registration.” They reported using only internal databases and publicly available sources.
This issue has been recognized at both national and EU levels for some time. For instance, an internal Foreign Office paper in February 2024, reported by “Report Mainz,” stated that Europol found that systematic data comparisons within the EU were impossible. In a related document, the responsible EU IT agency, LISA, underscored the enormous challenge posed by firearms smuggling, noting that while roughly 35 million illegal weapons are circulating in Europe, only 620,000 cases are stored in the Schengen Information System.
Warnings about arms smuggling emerged shortly after the start of the Ukraine conflict. In May 2022, Europol informed EU government representatives that “the illegal trade had already begun and could increase.” In July 2022, the Deputy Chief of the EU Border Guard Agency (Frontex) warned in the Bundestag’s Interior Committee: “In Ukraine, we currently have nearly unrestricted access. to war weapons. We assume, and we have seen the first signs, that these could enter Europe via smuggling.”
Meanwhile, various seizure cases in Spain have highlighted the scale of the problem. According to Spanish police, they have confiscated large quantities of war weapons and munitions during raids on drug cartels. Investigators from the National Police and the Guardia Civil told “Report Mainz” that they regularly intercepted NATO-standard 5.56 mm ammunition. Although traces were often difficult to follow due to missing serial numbers, the path of the ammunition could be more easily determined. Spanish investigators strongly suspect that it originates from Ukraine.
