The Organisation Conjointe de Coopération en matière d'ARmement was established by an Administrative Arrangement on 12th November 1996 by the Defence Ministers of France, Germany, Italy and the UK. Its aim is to provide more effective and efficient arrangements for the management of certain existing and future collaborative armament programmes.

The Defence Ministers of the four founding Nations went on to sign a Treaty, the "OCCAR Convention", which was subsequently ratified and came into force on the 28th January 2001. The Convention gives OCCAR its legal status, allowing it to place and manage contracts, and to employ its own staff. Belgium and Spain joined OCCAR, respectively in 2003 and 2005. Finland, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden and Turkey are actually participating in OCCAR-managed programmes, without being members of the organisation.

OCCAR aims at becoming a centre of excellence in its business domain. This vision is underpinned by the implementation of a comprehensive management framework, comprising a Quality Management System, which attained the ISO 9001:2000 certification in July 2005. Recertification on an annual basis was attained up to 2008. In 2009, the OCCAR Quality Management System was certified against the new ISO 9001:2008 standard.

History