Germany will not deliver any weapons to Saudi Arabia by the end of March

The Federal Government is still reluctant to stop exporting arms to Saudi Arabia. The ban on such arms shipments should now continue until the end of March. This was announced by Federal Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (SPD).

The arms stop was decided in November, shortly after the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. In January, it was already extended by two months until March 9. Then Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) and Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) agreed to SPIEGEL information initially on it, two more weeks dranzuhängen. Now it has even become three weeks.

In arms exports, the federal government is in a dilemma. On the one hand, the business brings very high revenues. On the other hand, Germany must also fulfill moral obligations. The Grand Coalition disagreed about what to do next. (Read the current SPIEGEL story on the subject here).

Development in Yemen is crucial

The recent extension of the export stop explained Maas with the developments in Yemen. "We believe that the Yemeni war must come to an end as soon as possible," said the Foreign Minister.

Even already approved exports should not be delivered by the end of the month, according to Maas. Whether the ban is actually suspended is still unclear. The Foreign Minister did not provide any specific information on this: "During the course of the month, we will be dealing with the development, especially with regard to the Yemen conflict, which we will observe," said Maas.

France and the United Kingdom have recently been sharply criticized for stopping German armaments exports to Saudi Arabia because they are also affected by joint armaments projects. According to SPIEGEL information, this is about 50 contracts from French companies that can not be fulfilled at present. Even within Germany, the Federal Government got its problems with their decision: Weapons manufacturer Rheinmetall claims damages because of the delivery stop.

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The opinion research institute Civey works with a multi-level fully automated procedure. All representative real-time surveys are played in a Germany-wide network of more than 20,000 websites ("Riversampling"), so it is not only users of SPIEGEL ONLINE interviewed. Anyone can participate in the surveys online and will be included in the representative result with their answers if they have registered. From these users, Civey draws a quoted sample that ensures that it matches the population, for example, in terms of age, gender and population density. Finally, in a third step, the results are weighted by other attendees' socio-demographic factors and attitudes to correct distortions and prevent manipulation. More information can be found in the Civey FAQ.

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The answer of each participant is weighted so that the result of a survey is representative of the population. For the Sunday question and the government monitor, this population comprises the population entitled to vote in Germany. The weighting is done fully automatically on the basis of the personal details at the registration as well as the history of previous answers of a user. More methodological details can be found in the Civey whitepaper.

Will you reach enough participants online?

Opinion polls are usually conducted by phone or online. The significance of the results depends on how many people can be reached and how many actually participate in a survey when they are approached. Internet connections and fixed-line connections are currently about equally widespread in Germany - with around 90 percent of households each, mobile phones even as high as 95 percent. The willingness to participate in all methods in the single-digit percentage range, especially experts estimate it for telephone surveys.
Thus, in both methods there is a group of people that can not be reached because they either have no connection to the respective network or do not want to participate in the survey. Therefore, a significant number of people must always be approached for a meaningful result. Civey surveys are currently in addition to SPIEGEL ONLINE in more than 20,000 other websites involved, including various media. This ensures that as many populations as possible can be reached.

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In our graphs, the statistical error is shown as a colored interval. This interval shows the uncertainty associated with a survey score. For example, on the Sunday question, one can not say exactly how many percent a party would get in a poll, but specify an interval in which the outcome is likely to be. If the intervals of two survey values ​​overlap, then strictly speaking no statements about the difference can be made. For the Sunday question this means: If the poll numbers of two parties are so close together that overlap their error intervals, it can not be derived from which would currently perform better in the election.

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Who is behind Civey?

At this point, readers in the app and on the mobile / stationary website have the opportunity to participate in a representative Civey survey. Civey is an online opinion research institute based in Berlin. The start-up cooperates with different partners, including SPIEGEL ONLINE as well as the "Tagesspiegel", "Cicero", the "Freitag" and Change.org. Civey is funded by the ProFit funding program of Investitionsbank Berlin and the European Regional Development Fund .