Summary: Non-signatory Greece shares humanitarian concerns over cluster munitions, but says that national defense and other considerations prevent its accession. Greece has never participated in a meeting of the convention and abstained from voting on the first UN resolution on the convention in December 2015. Greece states that it has never used cluster munitions. It has produced, imported, and stockpiles cluster munitions, but it is unclear if Greece ever exported them.

Policy

The Hellenic Republic (Greece) has not acceded to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

In early April 2016, Greece responded to the Monitor’s request for updated information on its position on accession to the Convention on Cluster Munitions, stating:

Greece takes note of the humanitarian concerns raised by the Convention and the legitimate care to protect civilian populations. However, compelling reasons of national defense and issues of operational and financial planning will not allow us to accede to the Convention in the short term. However we will not stand in the way of the parties to the Convention in their efforts for its universalization.[1]

Government officials have given various reasons as to why Greece cannot join, including national security concerns, the cost of stockpile destruction, and positions of neighboringcountries.[2]

On 7 December 2015, Greece abstained from voting on the first UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolution on the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which urges states outside the convention to “join as soon as possible.”[3] A total of 140 states, including many non-signatories, voted in favor of the non-binding resolution.

In an explanation of the decision by European Union (EU) non-signatories Greece, Estonia, Poland, and Finland to abstain from the resolution, Poland stated that the four countries “will continue to support international efforts aimed at addressing the humanitarian, socioeconomic and security impact of conventional weapons, including cluster munitions, and halting their indiscriminate use, especially when they are directed at innocent and defenceless civilians.”[4] It continued, “we support the humanitarian goal of the Convention on Cluster Munitions” but “at the same time, we believe that humanitarian concerns must be balanced with States’ legitimate security concerns and military and defence needs.”

The statement identifies the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) as “the most competent and effective framework for addressing the issue of cluster munitions.” While the countries “remain disappointed by the failure of the Geneva discussions” to conclude a new protocol on cluster munitions in 2011, they “remain firmly committed to fulfilling all our obligations” as CCW States Parties.[5]

The failure effectively ended CCW deliberations on the matter, leaving the Convention on Cluster Munitions as the sole international instrument to specifically address the weapons. Greece has continued to express its desire for cluster munitions to be addressed through the CCW, but has not made any concrete proposals for CCW work on the topic since 2011.[6]

Greece participated in two conferences of the Oslo Process that developed the convention text (Lima in May 2007 and Vienna in December 2007), but attended the negotiations in Dublin in May 2008 only as an observer and did not sign the Convention on Cluster Munitions when it was opened for signature in December 2008.[7]

Greece has never participated in a meeting of the Convention on Cluster Munitions, even as an observer. It was invited to, but did not attend, the convention’s First Review Conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia in September 2015.

Greece has voted in favor of recent UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolutions condemning the use of cluster munitions in Syria, most recently in December 2014.[8]

Greece is a State Party to the Mine Ban Treaty.

Use

A government official informed the Monitor in 2012 that Greece has never used cluster munitions.[9]

In December 2013, a Greek defense blog reported on “intense debate” by the General Staff of the Greek Armed Forces over procurement efforts to modernize the country’s stocks of ammunition for the M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) due to the apparent requirement that it “select and implement a solution within a global binding environment that is required by international treaty to ban cluster munitions.”[10]

Production, transfer, and stockpiling

Greece has produced, imported, and stockpiles cluster munitions, but it is unclear if Greece ever exported them.[11]

Greece has not made a formal commitment to no longer produce cluster munitions, but in 2011, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs official informed the Monitor that “the last production of cluster munitions in Greece was in 2001.”[12]

Hellenic Defence Systems S.A. (EBO-PYRKAL), also known as EAS, produced two types of ground-delivered cluster munitions:[13]

• GRM-49 155mm artillery projectile with 49 dual-purpose improved conventional munitions (DPICM) submunitions; and
• 107mm high explosive/improved conventional munition (HE/ICM) GRM-20 mortar projectile containing 20 DPICM.

Greece has imported 203mm DPICM artillery projectiles, M26 cluster munition rockets, and Rockeye bombs from the United States (US).[14] According to US export records, it also imported 4,008 CBU-55B cluster bombs at some point between 1970 and 1995.[15] In 2011, a Greek official informed the Monitor that Greece possesses 1,286 CBU-55B cluster bombs.[16]

Greece is the sole reported customer for the Autonomous Free Flight Dispenser System (AFDS), which disperses a variety of explosive submunitions, developed in the past by General Dynamics (US) and LFK (Germany).[17] Jane’s Information Group lists Greece as also possessing BLG-66 Belouga and CBU-71 cluster bombs.[18]