Summary: Non-signatory Greece says that it shares humanitarian concerns over cluster munitions but that national security considerations prevent it from acceding to the Convention on Cluster Munitions. Greece last participated in a meeting of the convention in 2016. It abstained from voting on the key annual United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) resolution promoting the convention in December 2022.

Greece states that it has never used cluster munitions, though it has produced and imported them. Greece possesses cluster munitions, but has not provided information on the quantities and types stockpiled.

Policy

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

Greece has provided several reasons for not acceding to the convention, including national security considerations, the possible cost of stockpile destruction, and the positions of neighboringcountries.[1] In 2016, Greece told the Monitor that “compelling reasons of national defense and issues of operational and financial planning” meant that it could not accede to the convention “in the short term.”[2]

Greece participated in two conferences of the Oslo Process that developed the convention text, in Lima in May 2007 and Vienna in December 2007. However, it attended the negotiations in Dublin in May 2008 only as an observer and did not sign the Convention on Cluster Munitions when it opened for signature in December 2008.[3]

Greece participated as an observer at the convention’s Sixth Meeting of States Parties in Geneva in September 2016, which marked its first and, to date, only attendance at a meeting of the convention. Greece was invited to, but did not attend, the convention’s Tenth Meeting of States Parties held in August–September 2022.

In December 2022, Greece abstained from voting on a key UNGA resolution that urged states outside the Convention on Cluster Munitions to “join as soon as possible.”[4] Greece has abstained from the vote on this annual UNGA resolution promoting the convention since it was first introduced in 2015.

In 2015–2018, Greece endorsed joint UNGA statements on cluster munitions made by Poland on behalf of itself and other European Union (EU) member states that are not party to the convention—Estonia, Finland, and Romania—which reiterated the need to meet their own “legitimate security concerns and military and defence needs.”[5] [MH1] 

Greece has not independently condemned use of cluster munitions in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion of the country in February 2022, though this use has sparked local media interest and scrutiny of Greece’s lack of support for the Convention on Cluster Munitions.[6] Greece has voted in favor of UNGA resolutions expressing outrage at use of cluster munitions in Syria.[7]

Greece is party to the Mine Ban Treaty and the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW).

Use

A government official told the Monitor in 2012 that Greece has never used cluster munitions.[8]

In 2013, a Greek defense blog reported on an “intense debate” by the General Staff of the Greek armed forces over procurement efforts to modernize the country’s ammunition for the M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) due to the apparent requirement that Greece “select and implement a solution…required by international treaty to ban cluster munitions.”[9]

Production, transfer, and stockpiling

Greece has produced and imported cluster munitions, but it is unclear if it has ever exported them.[10]

Greece has not formally committed to never produce cluster munitions in the future. In 2011, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs official claimed that “the last production of cluster munitions in Greece was in 2001.”[11]

Greece possesses cluster munitions, and while it has not provided information on the quantities stockpiled, the stockpile likely includes two types of ground-delivered cluster munitions which were produced by Hellenic Defence Systems S.A. (EBO-PYRKAL), also known as EAS:[12]

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

Greece has also imported 203mm DPICM artillery projectiles, M26 cluster munition rockets, and Rockeye cluster bombs from the United States (US) in the past.[13] US export records show that Greece also imported 4,008 CBU-55B cluster bombs between 1970 and 1995.[14] In 2011, a Greek official told the Monitor that Greece possesses 1,286 CBU-55B cluster bombs.[15]

Greece received the Autonomous Free Flight Dispenser System (AFDS), developed in the past by General Dynamics (US) and LFK (Germany), which disperses various explosive submunitions.[16] According to Jane’s Information Group, Greece also possesses BLG-66 Belouga cluster bombs manufactured in France, and US-made CBU-71 cluster bombs.[17]