The EU is expected to reach an inflection point for defence integration between now and 2030. Demand for what the public perceives as a common defence policy has never been greater. If Eurosceptic and pro-EU parties agree on one thing, then it is that the way to address citizens’ concerns is primarily by developing an agenda that urgently restores a sense of security.
Shoring up Europe’s defences is invariably declared a priority. This sense of urgency is reflected in the European Council’s Strategic Agenda 2024-29 and the political guidelines of the new Commission. President von der Leyen has commissioned several reports to assess the current state of affairs and advise on the way forward. The Draghi report calls the major investments needed to plug shortfalls in the defence industrial sphere an “insurance cost” for Europe to become more strategically autonomous. In October, the former Finnish President Niinistö is expected to advise on how to connect the administrative, budgetary, and operational dots to bolster civilian and defence readiness in a ‘whole of EU’ fashion, and the next High Representative, together with a new Commissioner for Defence and Space, is expected to produce a White Paper on the Future of European Defence within 100 days of investiture.
Given the rise of military threats to Europe and the fragility within NATO, this White Paper should propose to formulate a common strategic vision, establish a hierarchy of threats, and drive more realistic defence planning, capability generation, and institutional reforms in terms of a distribution of tasks between European actors, all in complementarity with NATO.
Security Continuum
If the EU wants to shape Europe’s new defence architecture to meet its own specific interests and values, then it will have to review its conceptual frameworks instead of relying on manuals that are not always adapted to the European context, as the failure of the US-inspired 2023 Ukrainian counter-offensive has taught us. It will need to give a European interpretation of the notion of deterrence (including nuclear), which is an a-typical frame of mind for the peace project, and develop the capabilities that meet the challenges posed by ongoing conflicts and other threat scenarios that may come to pass.
With the 2016 EU Global Strategy out of date and the 2022 Strategic Compass up for review in 2025, the next High Representative, supported by the European External Action Service (EEAS), has the responsibility to enrol EU bodies, institutions, member states, and allies in a reflection process that defines the EU’s strategic goals and level of ambition for the period up to 2030. Rather than merely updating the shopping list of the 2022 Strategic Compass, a hierarchy should be established between various scenarios, thereby allowing the EU Military Staff to develop its own doctrine.
With the promise of enlargement, the EU and the candidate countries share a security continuum and (in principle) a vision of the preferred future of the continent. The EU must prioritise dispute resolution of the remaining security and political issues with and among candidate countries. Similarly, the EU will have to contribute to the terms of the peace agreements that settle conflicts between candidate countries and Russia. Their resolution would enhance the stability of the continent and give the EU a geopolitical advantage. This will require not only diplomatic heft and money but also troops and kit. The EU will have to deploy CSDP operations to stabilise and integrate candidate countries. The taboo of ‘boots on the ground’ in Ukraine needs to be broken. Article 44 TEU coalitions of the able and willing would be a first step. Forward defence troops should also be fielded in other candidate countries that ask for them.
A Rapid Deployment Capacity should not only be fully operational by 2025, as laid down in the Strategic Compass, but it should also grow far beyond the anticipated 5 000 troops and by 2030 meet the targets initially set in 1999 with the Helsinki Headline Goal (50-60 000 troops mobilised within 60 days and sustained for a period of min. 1 year) to help generate credible EU deterrence. The establishment of a proper, standing EU military HQ is a conditio sine qua non in this regard.
The Union should increasingly involve future member states in threat assessments and live exercises to foster strategic convergence and enhance interoperability between European armed forces. In terms of gradual integration of candidate countries into the EU’s defence industry, Ukraine is now blazing the trail for the others. This should also be the stepping stone to a truly European defence technological and industrial base for operational use.
Wartime Economy
If member states were to get serious about the creation of a defence procurement union, then they would take a giant leap in the Europeanisation of hitherto fragmented defence markets. The idea would be, literally, to get more bang for the buck.
Yet, for the Europeanisation of bigger defence platforms to succeed, all participants in a procurement union would have to let go of their defence industrial monopolies and close the loophole in Article 346.1(b) TFEU which allows member states to procure military equipment 100% domestically. The main obstacle here is France, where current politics will not allow the defence industry to be ‘harmonised’ by Brussels, despite urgent calls for the need to see narrow national interests in their proper geopolitical context and to put the entire EU on the footing of a wartime economy. Absent such political alignment in the EU, bilateral and multilateral agreements are the most realistic way forward, like the one on long-range and deep precision cruise missiles (one key element for Europe’s future deterrent posture) between the Weimar Triangle and the UK.
Driven by President von der Leyen’s ambition to build a European air shield, a bottom-up approach to harmonising new segments of defence markets may nevertheless yield results. The new innovation hub at the European Defence Agency may act as a catalyst and amplifier in this respect. By focussing on the production of dual-use goods a spill-over effect could be triggered that ultimately engulfs the last bastions of national defence monopolies. For investments to have any chance of producing such an upward thrust, complementary action should be aimed at cutting red tape: the complexity of the regulatory frameworks related to defence industrial activities (for production, export, use, access to information, etc.) and to defence procurement, including within the internal market, currently represent too many obstacles for potential investors. To combine these efforts, the Commission should urgently propose a European defence production act.
Under its first-ever European Defence Industrial Strategy (EDIS) and its financial leg, the European Defence Industrial Programme (EDIP), the Commission aims to encourage greater European defence cooperation via two separate tracks. The first one connects member states by stimulating their joint funding and acquisition of arms and equipment. The second track engages defence companies by incentivising them to develop new capabilities jointly and improve their crisis resilience. The key benchmarks of the EDIS are ambitious yet attainable: by 2030, member states are expected to procure at least 40% of defence equipment in a collaborative manner, with at least 50% of their defence investments within the EU. Also by that date, the value of intra-EU defence trade should represent at least 35% of the value of the EU defence market. For these targets to be met, a break with past spending practices is needed. This is not so much a ‘how to’ question, since the EDIS provides commendable pathways to get there, but a matter of numbers.
Substantial money incentivises joint ventures. Pending endorsement of the draft EDIP regulation, now pushed back until mid-2025, the member states should decide to back the EDIS with €100bn from 2028 onwards, i.e., well beyond the €1.5bn currently envisaged purely to avoid a defence shutdown before the next multiannual financial framework. This substantially higher figure is not merely an illustration of the wide gap that exists between supranationalist rhetoric and the willingness of member states to follow suit. The European Defence Agency has calculated that, if all of NATO’s EU member states had spent 2% of their GDP on defence in 2006-20, they would have allocated an extra €1.1trn for defence purposes. Out of this sum, 20%, or €220bn, should have been dedicated to defence investment. The defence equivalent of Mario Draghi’s big bazooka special lending programme to help central banks bail their economies out of future economic crises is therefore within reach.
In view of the grave hour that Europe faces, member states should, indeed, be willing to do “whatever it takes.” The next High Representative, supported by the EEAS and in close collaboration with the new defence commissioner, should spare no effort or opportunity to get them there.
Policy recommendations:
- The next High Representative, supported by the EEAS, has the responsibility to enrol EU bodies, institutions, and member states, as well as allies and like-minded countries, in a reflection process that defines the EU’s strategic goals and level of ambition for the period up to 2030. Rather than merely updating the 2016 EU Global Strategy and the 2022 Strategic Compass, a hierarchy should be established between various scenarios, thereby allowing the EU Military Staff to develop its own doctrine that redefines how member states want to fight together in the pursuit of European values and interests. The upshot for this strategic review should be given in the White Paper on the Future of European Defence, which the HR and the new Commissioner for Defence and Space are expected to produce within 100 days of investiture.
- The defence equivalent of Mario Draghi’s ‘big bazooka’ special lending programme to help central banks bail their economies out of future economic crises is needed to incentivise joint ventures and turbocharge the implementation of the European Defence Industrial Strategy. The geopolitical context demands that member states abandon their cosy monopolies of yesteryear, put the entire EU on the footing of a wartime economy, and allow the better-resourced European Commission to shape up a defence procurement union.
Views expressed in ICDS publications are those of the author(s).