Policy

The Republic of Austria signed the Mine Ban Treaty on 3 December 1997 and ratified it on 29 June 1998, becoming a State Party on 1 March 1999. In 1996, Austria enacted legislation to implement the Mine Ban Treaty domestically.[1]

Austria has attended most meetings of the treaty, including the Third Review Conference in Maputo in June 2014 and the Seventeenth Meeting of States Parties in Geneva in November 2018, where it provided statements on victim assistance and implementation of Article 5.[2] Austria also attended the intersessional meetings in Geneva in May 2019. Austria submits annual Article 7 transparency reports.

Austria served on the Standing Committees on the General Status and Operation of the Convention (2001–2003), Victim Assistance (2005–2007, 2014), Cooperative Compliance (2016), and Article 5 Implementation (2018–2019) and was the president of the First Review Conference in 2004 and the Sixteenth Meeting of States Parties in 2017.

Austria is party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons and its Amended Protocol II on landmines and Protocol V on explosive remnants of war. It is also party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

Production, use, transfer, and stockpiling

According to the Austrian Chamber of Commerce, there has been no production of antipersonnel mines in Austria since 1945.[3] Reference works indicate that Austria has produced as many as 14 different types of directional fragmentation antipersonnel mines, as well as the SPM 75 (ARGES) bounding antipersonnel mine.[4] Companies involved in production have included Hirtenberger AG, Sudsteirische Metallindustrie GmbH (SMI), Dynamit Nobel Graz (formerly Dynamit Nobel Wien), and Armaturen-Gesellschaft BmgH (the SPM 75 bounding mine). Exact data about the past production of antipersonnel mines is not available.[5]

Production, export, and use of antipersonnel mines were formally renounced in September 1995. This was superseded by the domestic ban law.

It is uncertain if, or to which countries, Austria exported its SPM 75 bounding mine.

In 1996, Austria destroyed its stockpile of antipersonnel mines, including 116,000 M14 mines from the United States and small quantities of prototypes. Austria did not retain any antipersonnel mines for training.