History of Europe

What are neutrality laws?

Neutrality laws are a body of regulations designed to keep a country from actively or passively joining in an ongoing war between other nations. There are two general concepts of neutrality:

- Positive neutrality, where a country's laws require the government to take positive steps to enforce its neutrality.

- Negative neutrality,where the requirement is on citizens as individuals (not the government) not to act so as to aid one belligerent over the other (though the distinction, in modern conditions, may not always be very meaningful in effect.