The Spanish Government approved on Tuesday in the Council of Ministers a Royal Decree Law – which will have to be ratified by Congress – which adopts measures in relation to the arms trade with Israel. The text, published This Wednesday at the BOEcontemplate the following:
1.- “Prohibition” of the “Imports from Israel” and the “exports for Israel” of “defense material” and “dual use products and technologies.”
2.- “The traffic authorization requests of various types of fuel to Israel usable for military purposes will be denied” JP5 and JP8.
3.- Establishes the revocation of current authorizations of imports and exports.
4.- Beyond the arms, prohibits the importation of products originating in Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory.
This content was announced on Tuesday by the Minister of Economy, Carlos Body, both at a press conference and in his social networks, including the denial of the traffic of fuels of military use, but not to mention at first the denial of the armament traffic. This absence and others were publicly criticized by the Fin Campaign of Arms Trade with Israel, composed of 600 civil society organizations. Finally, that point was included in the final text.
The approved law is the first of these characteristics in the European Union and involves the officialization of administrative measures that will limit the direct trade of military material with Israel. It is a step with a symbolic and political burden, although it does not establish an integral embargo on arms relations with Israel.
The decree establishes the possibility of exceptions in case of “impairment” of “national general interests”
Exceptions
1.- The Decree Law, published in the BOE on Wednesday, establishes the possibility that, “exceptionally”, exports, imports or transits are authorized in the case of “impairment” of “national general interests”, salvity with which import permits or export of Israeli military material for products that a ministry considers “essential”, for example, could be granted.
These exceptions will have to be authorized by the Council of Ministers, after a report of the Interministerial Board regulating the foreign trade of defense and double use material, whose minutes are classified as secret from a decree of 1987, under the protection of the Law of Official Secrets. “You cannot know the arguments used to declare exceptionality,” they point out organizations integrated in the Fin Campaign of Arms Trade with Israel.
“NATIONAL GENERAL INTEREST” is a concept similar to the employee once by the Ministry of Defense to receive shipments of Israeli military material in 2024 and 2025. In these two years the Datacomex Commerce Datacomex portal in Spain has justified Several imports of Israel weapons appealing to “needs of national defense” or associated “to strategic programs of the Ministry of Defense, for use by the Ministry of Defense of Spain.”
A specific veto is not approved to hiring with companies from the Israeli military industry or the purchase to its subsidiaries
Hiring and other issues
2.- The Decree Law does not establish a specific prohibition to the purchase or public or private procurement with companies of the Israeli military industry or its subsidiaries, so these types of companies could not be legally excluded in a public tender.
Nor does it mention the at least 40 purchase contracts awarded by Spain to Israeli Armament Companies or their subsidiaries between October 2023 and May 2025, among which there are programs with non -completed execution deadlines. The hiring platform has recently annulled the publication of three contract award ads.
Government sources affirm that all contracts are revoked, but the cancellation agreements do not yet appear on the platform, recalls the administrative law professor at the Autonomous University, Eduardo Melero.
For the rest, the approved text “limits the definition of transfers” to “imports, exports and transits,” says researcher Alejandro Pozo, of the Center Delàs. That is, the decree law does not mention “purchases and sales, or transfers and brokerage”, “which are, together with the transit, the terms used by the International Trade Treaty to define transfers ”.
For the first time a specific prohibition to weapons imports and exports with Israel is approved
Armament brokerage is the intermediation business in sale operations, a legitimate activity if it is done with the corresponding licenses, but which is also associated with “subterfuges and scams”, to illicit traffic, when it is carried out without the necessary controls or transparency by all parties.
3.- Other issues that do not prohibit this decree law are technological collaboration, financial assistance, Israeli armament maintenance services or its subsidiaries, cooperation in R&D programs in universities, as well as participation in arms fairs or in joint military exercises.
There is no prohibition of technological collaboration, R&D programs in universities, financial assistance or maintenance services of Israeli or subsidiaries
Transit
4.- The approved text uses a different verb from that of “ban” in the case of transits. Specifically, it indicates that the Government will “deny” “the traffic authorization requests” of military material or double -use products, “in accordance with the provisions of the Foreign Trade Control Regulations” of Defense Material.
The Decree Law does not mention the US military bases, the main supplier of weapons to Israel. Washington is accepted by the Cooperation Agreement for Defense between Spain and the US – of the Range lower than international regulations – not to reveal the final destination of the load that passes through the Spanish bases. Spanish government sources indicate that the agreement will not be modified.
Therefore, armament scales can continue in Rota and Morón from the US to Israel. This has happened several times since October 2023, as in 2024 eldiario.es, because Spain is located in the middle of those transport routes that supply the Israeli State.
With respect to other Spanish ports or airports, the Decree Law does not mention specific surveillance protocols to inspect and analyze the loading documents of boats that cover usual armament supply routes for Israel and that make scale in Spanish territory.
The decree does not mention the transfers and will not apply to the transits of military material through the US bases, main weapons supplier to Israel
In 2024 several transits and transfers were detected in places such as the port of Algeciras. From Rescop and the Center delàs for Peace Studies indicate that, “without a defined mechanism with clear and verifiable instruments, such as systematic inspections, greater customs control or rigorous scrutiny of load manifestos”, this can be repeated.
For the rest, they can continue to pass vessels that scale in Barcelona or Valencia, for example, to acquire fuel and supplies on their route to ports from other countries, such as Morocco, to collect armament there and transport it to Israel, facilitating a supply that contributes to the Israeli occupation.
As for non -military trade, it prohibits imports from settlements but not other commercial relations that contribute to Israeli occupation or genocide
Commercial relations
5.- On non -arms trade, the decree law prohibits the specific import of civil products from settlements in the Palestinian occupied territories. Do not veto or sanction the rest of the commercial relations of non -military products linked to the occupation and Israeli apartheid.
There are Israeli companies and other nationalities, including Spañolasthat they have projects and businesses in the Palestinian occupied territories and that contribute to Israeli crimes, as they have denounced Amnesty International or the UN rapporteur, with listings. There are also entities involved in the illegal occupation without the need to manufacture and export products manufactured in settlements.
The International Court of Justice asks the countries, specifically“To prevent commercial and investment relations that contribute to the maintenance of the illegal situation created by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory.” “Israel tries to cover up, in many ways, the footprint of the occupation” in its products, recalled Sunday in this interview Chris Fruit, one of the jurists and members of the Investigation Commission assigned by the UN.
For all these reasons, the United Nations Rapporteur, following this request from the Court -and based on the requirement of the Convention on Genocide to “prevent and sanction” -, it has long been requesting the states to suspend their commercial and diplomatic relations with Israel, in addition to integral embargoes.
Faced with an ongoing genocide, what is needed is an integral, retroactive and transparent embargo that ends the entire military relationship between the Spanish State and Israel
Final campaign to arms trade with Israel, 600 organizations
“It is not an integral embargo”
The Campaign for the end of arms trade With Israel, composed of more than six hundred groups and organizations, has issued a statement in which it indicates that what is approved is a “symbolic milestone” since “for the first time” measures are taken in this regard, but it emphasizes that it is “a partial embargo”, with “holes and serious exceptions” that “allow the continuity of arms relations with Israel in the middle of a genocide.”
It also emphasizes that the Decree Law “does not mention the US military bases, nor hiring with the Israeli military industry, nor details about how transits will be controlled to prevent our ports from being a slope.”
The solidarity network against the occupation of Palestine, one of the most mobilized groups, affirms that the text of Royal Decree-Law approved “is far from responding to the demands of civil society, which claims an integral embargo and a total breakup of relations with Israel” and highlights “the absence of concrete measures so that Spanish ports cease to be authentic logistics nodes of the genocide.”
“Given an ongoing genocide, what is needed is an integral, retroactive and transparent embargo that ends the entire military relationship between the Spanish and Israel State and all possible measures to prevent and stop the genocide,” adds the campaign statement that integrates the 600 organizations.