Geopolitical Europe Pulse: bold ideas for EU defence
31 January 2025
EU Defence Commissioner Kubilius calls for the allocation of 100 billion euros for defence in the next Multiannual Financial Framework, US President Trump’s announcements regarding his interest in Greenland prompt discussion on mutual defence among EU member states, and European defence watchers are awaiting the publication of the White Paper on European defence, expected in March. The EU’s role as a player in European defence is likely to grow in 2025, especially with regard to funding European defence and strengthening Europe’s capacity to act. This Geopolitical Europe Pulse brings you a roundup of the major challenges and reflections on next bold (and very pragmatic) steps to achieve this.
Towards an EU defence union? The EU must play a much bigger role in defence to allow Europeans to respond to the security challenges they are facing. As Luigi Scazzieri writes in his latest policy brief for the Centre for European Reform, “Europeans face three big obstacles. First, the capability gaps to fill remain very large. Second, national procurement and capability development plans are quite fragmented. Third, the European defence manufacturing is undersized and largely organised along national lines.”
The cost of non-Europe: One of the key challenges to fund European defence is not only the lack of funding over decades, but also that Europeans do often not opt for European cooperation or capabilities and therefore miss the opportunity to leverage economies of scale. With regard to military forces and strategic assets, defence equipment procurement, and research into emerging disruptive technologies, the cost of “non-Europe” ranges between 17 and 58 billion euros per year, as outlined in this study by the European Parliamentary Research Service.
How to pay for European defence? The current instruments for funding European (and EU) defence will be insufficient to respond to the estimated need of additional 500 billion euros for defence over the next decade. A next step for levelling up EU defence could “be to identify, develop and fund capabilities of common interest at the European level – capabilities that individual Member States cannot achieve on their own”, as outlined in this policy brief published by the EUISS. The author concludes that “The EU could play a central role in ensuring stable and long-term funding of European defence by increasing its spending on defence R&D and key dual-use strategic enablers such as secure satellite communication, military mobility infrastructure, and Airborne Early Warning & Control (AEW&C) systems. (…) These capabilities reflect lessons from the war in Ukraine, align with Member States’ existing defence plans and are in line with NATO priorities”. The positive side-effect: not only would the EU fund these capabilities, but also take on more strategic responsibility and level up as a player in European defence.
The future of the CSDP missions: The EU has currently 24 ongoing missions and operations under the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), most of them for crisis management or protecting global commons. With the training mission for Ukrainian soldiers, the biggest CSDP mission is, however, based in Europe, illustrating the highly different challenges these missions face. This policy brief published by Clingendael illustrates three trends for the future of the CSDP missions: a Europe focus, a changing approach to the Sahel, and an increasing importance of the protection of common goods.
Plugging in the UK: It is evident that European defence does not stop at the borders of the EU, but also needs to include other European states — and especially the UK. With a government in London that is strongly in favour of resetting the relationship and beefing up ties in security and defence, the window of opportunity for cooperation is wide open. One could imagine plug-and-play mechanisms for EU instruments or deeper defence industrial cooperation between the EU and the UK. This transcript from oral evidence by London-based European security experts Armida van Rij and Ed Arnold sums up the current contribution of the UK to European security and avenues for deepening cooperation.