Franco-Baltic Way Forward: Towards a European Armament Bloc

To counter the threat from Russia and to manage the pressures of burden-shifting, European countries must ramp up their defence industry — and enhancing cooperation is the way to get there.

A momentous sequence of events has unfolded this summer. It began with the G7 summit in Évian, in which, amongst other things, Europeans secured continued support to Ukraine, including from the United States. A NATO summit in Ankara formalised ‘burden-shifting’, with Europeans now carrying a greater share of the responsibility for the continent’s defence. It culminated in Paris with a summit of the Coalition of the Willing, followed by a military parade in which the 35 coalition members marched across the Champs-Élysées alongside the Ukrainians under the theme of ‘European strategic awakening’.

The Industrial Dimension

Running alongside the security pledges, industrial questions featured prominently throughout. Possessing high-performance production capabilities, as well as the means to innovate and develop one’s own weapons, ensures autonomy of action. A strong industry with a steady supply chain helps deter a potential adversary, as it demonstrates a readiness to sustain high-intensity operations over the long term and with suitable equipment. The lessons learned from Ukraine are being closely studied across Europe, both in terms of flexibility and adaptability, as well as the need for mass production and stockpiling.

Despite reaffirming its commitment to the Alliance in Ankara, Washington announced its intention to scale back American involvement in Europe. Indeed, over the recent months, the US has clearly signalled divergent interests, from its position in the talks with Russia that led to the Anchorage summit in August 2025 to its stance on Greenland. Europeans need capabilities that they can deploy freely, whereas some US-purchased equipment may be subject to restrictions — concerns over access to the F-35’s software and source code being a case in point.

Strengthening the European defence industry is one of the EU’s stated objectives at the very heart of its White Paper on European Defence – Readiness 2030, published in March 2025. Funding instruments carry European preference clauses: at least 65% of the content of any funded defence equipment must originate in the EU or associated countries, thereby ensuring that investments directly benefit the continent’s producers.

The drive to reinforce the fabric of the European defence industry and tighten the links between member states’ defence technologies is underway. France’s involvement in the Baltic Sea region is one example.

The Accelerated Engagement

In recent years, the position of French defence manufacturers in the region has strengthened, and defence partnerships have proliferated — a trend that has only accelerated since 2022 due to several factors. First, certain types of equipment, such as the CAESAR howitzers, have performed well in Ukraine, convincing European buyers that they are a worthy purchase. Second, EU instruments and programmes designed to support rearmament — notably the European Defence Industry Reinforcement through common Procurement Act (EDIRA), the subsequent European Defence Industry Programme (EDIP), and the Security Action for Europe (SAFE) — favour European equipment. Third, prompted by Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine and the restructuring of the French military presence in Africa, Paris has refocused on Europe.

French forces are deployed across the eastern flank, stretching from Romania to Finland. French troops are stationed in Estonia; the air forces participate regularly in Baltic Air Policing, and the navy is heavily involved in Baltic Sentry. The carrier strike group Charles de Gaulle was sent on a mission to the North and Baltic Sea in the spring of 2026; that mission was then interrupted by the war in Iran, and it was redeployed first to the eastern Mediterranean and later to the Red Sea.

Beyond force posture, Paris has turned its political and strategic attention to the eastern flank. While visiting Bratislava in 2023, President Emmanuel Macron regretted France’s lack of engagement in Central and Eastern Europe. Two years later, the Nancy Treaty was signed between France and Poland, providing a framework for bilateral cooperation, particularly in the industrial sector.

In 2025, the latest National Strategic Review identified Russia as the primary threat facing France and the wider European continent, and set out strategic objectives to address it, notably through a strong, united European defence and a robust European industrial base. To complicate Russia’s calculations, France has also reinforced its deterrent posture with the announcement of an “forward deterrence” framework that integrates several Baltic Sea countries: Denmark, Poland, Sweden, Norway, and potentially Finland.

Not a One-Way Street

It is against the backdrop of these contributions to NATO’s deterrence posture on the eastern and northern flanks that partnerships began to flourish. The other driver was the growing uncertainty about the US commitment to Europe — sharpened by threats over Greenland. Defence and defence-related agreements are now in force with all regional partners: a declaration on strengthening cooperation with Estonia (2026), the Narvik Agreement with Norway (2026), the Nancy Treaty with Poland (2025), the strategic partnership with Denmark (2025), the renewal of the strategic partnership with Sweden (2024), a new action plan for the strategic partnership signed with Lithuania (2025) and Latvia (2023), and the framework paper on defence cooperation with Finland (2018).

Several key defence contracts also stand out. Denmark, Estonia and Lithuania have ordered CAESARs, some of which Denmark has transferred to Kyiv. Denmark has also ordered SAMP/T NG systems, with Estonia and Norway reportedly interested. And, more recently, Sweden has bought four frigates from Naval Group, forging a maritime partnership with France.

France ordered two Saab GlobalEye radar aircraft from Sweden, including an option to buy two more. This contract — in addition to replacing four American AWACS aircraft — is also intended to boost the European Defence and Industrial Technological Base (DITB) and interoperability between the continent’s armed forces. More recently, at this year’s Eurosatory, France’s largest exhibition dedicated to land and air-land defence, the country ordered the Blaze autonomous interceptor drone systems from the Latvian company Origin Robotics. Baltic expertise in anti-drone systems has thus been acknowledged and will be utilised to equip the French armed forces, which lack such capabilities.

Towards an Autonomous but Joint Future

A genuine step towards European autonomy would be to jointly develop capabilities, both in innovation and in strategic enablers, currently supplied mainly by the US. Several projects with French participation are in progress. For deep-strike capabilities, the European Long Strike Approach (ELSA) initiative brings in two Baltic Sea countries, Sweden and Poland, and implementation groups have now been set up. Alongside it, the Franco-German Joint Early Warning for a European Lookout (JEWEL) initiative aims to build a European early-warning capability. During the meeting in Paris on 13 July, the Coalition of the Willing announced the establishment of an integrated anti-ballistic missile coalition; it will build a shared anti-ballistic missile capacity to complement existing systems. The initiative will bring together the Baltic Sea states, such as Denmark, Norway and Sweden, alongside France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Ukraine, and the UK.

The Baltic Sea states are setting trends in rearmament and capability development, particularly in new technologies such as drones. Defence spending as a percentage of GDP in the region is, in fact, among the highest in NATO: over 4% for Poland and the Baltic states, and above 2% for the Nordic countries, with forecasts pointing to higher figures in the coming years. There is real potential for even deeper cooperation, and some joint efforts have already begun.

For instance, KNDS France and Skeleton have recently signed a joint declaration to explore co-producing energy systems for military vehicles. Earlier last year, the Finnish space technology company ICEYE and the French aerospace group Safran launched a strategic partnership to develop AI-driven solutions for geospatial intelligence. Structural partnerships are also emerging. Following the collapse of the German-French-Spanish Future Combat Air System (FCAS) project, there is discussion of a potential alliance between the French aerospace firm Dassault and the Swedish Saab to develop the next-generation fighter aircraft.

Nothing will be straightforward in Europe’s competitive, fragmented defence industry. Yet momentum is building, driven by the European states themselves and supported by the EU at the institutional level. There is reason to hope that cooperation will deepen between European countries with shared industrial and operational interests — as many around the Baltic Sea, and France, appear to have.

Views expressed in ICDS publications are those of the author(s).