Summary of the day
Estonia, France and Poland issued a call for “urgently” increasing Europe’s defence readiness.
The European Commission presented its new European Defence Industry Strategy and a proposal for a European Defence Industry program.
Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, said that the strategy “will support Member States to not only spend more, but better, together and European.”
Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, said “Russia war of aggression has brought a great sense of urgency to step up our industrial defence capacities.”
Thierry Breton, the EU’s internal market commissioner, said boosting Europe’s defence industrial base is of “existential” importance and that the issue of financing will have to be discussed.
Margrethe Vestager, the Commission’s executive vice president, acknowledged that “1.5 billion is not a lot of money when it comes to the defence industry – but it can still work as an incentive, as a bonus, as what makes member states come together.”
Guntram Wolff, a senior fellow at Bruegel, said that “as usual it is a mix of aspiration and some concrete measures.”
Max Bergmann, director of the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said “the most logical way forward is for the EU to just borrow the damn money through Eurobonds.”
CSIS’ Mathieu Droin said the new European Defence Investment Strategy “might not be the silver bullet to solve the structural issues of the European defense industrial base, but it is a very positive development.”
The Hungarian foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, said in a press conference that his country would not support Mark Rutte, the outgoing Dutch prime minister, as Nato’s next secretary-general.
Mathieu Droin, a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told us that the new European Defence Investment Strategy “might not be the silver bullet to solve the structural issues of the European defense industrial base, but it is a very positive development.”
“It sends important messages,” he said.
First to Ukraine and Russia, that EU military support for Ukraine is here to stay, and to expand. It is not a magical spell that puts the European industrial base ‘in a war footing’, on par with Russia, but it tells that Europe stands ready for a long war of attrition and to ultimately prevail over Russia.
Second to the United States that, amid transatlantic uncertainties, Europeans are serious about taking their share of the burden, while giving a sense of European agency by complementing NATO’s motto of ‘spending more’ with an injunction to “spend better, together, and European”.
And, he said, “it’s a message to member states to finally get their acts together.”
As always success lies in the conversion from strategy to policies, and the EU has an uneven track record in this regard (cf. PESCO, Strategic Compass, Versailles agenda, etc.).
Without sticks, it needs its carrots to be very attractive to get industries moving. As it stands, the goals set for 2030 seem ambitious (35% of intra-EU defense trade, 50% of EU procurement, 40% of collaborative procurement), but it is always better to start with a good level of ambition.
Hungary opposes Rutte's Nato candidacy, foreign minister says
The Hungarian foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, said today in a press conference that his country would not support Mark Rutte, the outgoing Dutch prime minister, as Nato’s next secretary-general.
Rutte, a longtime head of government, has already won the endorsement of Nato’s biggest members.
The Netherlands has over the past years been among the EU countries most vocal about concerns regarding democratic backsliding in Hungary.
In 2020, Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, quipped: “I don’t know what is the personal reason for the Dutch prime minister to hate me or Hungary.”
And in a particularly tense summit in 2021, when tensions rose among leaders over a Hungarian anti-LGBT law, Rutte said Hungary must respect fundamental rights or leave. “My goal is to bring Hungary to its knees on this issue,” he said at the time.
Today, the Hungarian foreign minister appeared to refer back to these comments.
“We certainly can’t support the election of a person to the position of NATO’s secretary general, who previously wanted to force Hungary on its knees,” Szijjártó said.
Updated
Europe approaching moment 'where it will be appropriate not to be a coward', Macron says
Speaking in Prague today, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, said “we are certainly approaching a moment in our Europe where it will be appropriate not to be a coward,” Reuters reported.
He also said France and the Czech Republic were “well aware that war is back on our soil (in Europe), that some powers which have become unstoppable are extending every day their threat of attacking us even more, and that we will have to live up to history and the courage that it requires.”
'Mix of aspiration and some concrete measures', expert says as EU defence industry plan comes under scrutiny
Guntram Wolff, senior fellow at Bruegel, has shared with us his first impressions of the new European Defence Industrial Strategy.
“As usual it is a mix of aspiration and some concrete measures,” he said.
“For a start, it is great that the EU Commission is putting forward a strategy. Europe gets way too little effective defence for how much it spends. European defence industry is fragmented and economies of scale are low,” he said.
Wolff also noted that “a lot of defence equipment is bought abroad – with relatively little domestic production left. In the short term, Europe will need to continue to procure and buy globally as the domestic capacities to produce are still too limited to satisfy the needs of Ukraine. But domestic production is increasing – and needs to increase further.”
Addressing the Commission’s aim to have a certain percentages of defence industrial production to be completed within the EU, Wolff said:
While I have been very sceptical of such targets in the EU’s green industrial strategy, I am more open to it in the case of defence. After all, this is a core area of sovereignty where foreign dependencies may be real security vulnerabilities.
But he also that the proposed European Defence Industry Programme “looks like a disappointing instrument to shore up domestic production in the short term.”
The planned €1.5 billion for 2025-27, he said, “is very small compared to defence spending and unlikely to have a big impact.”
Updated
'If not now, then when?' Commission vice-president says while conceding fund 'not a lot'
Margrethe Vestager, the Commission’s executive vice president, acknowledged at the press conference that “1.5 billion is not a lot of money when it comes to the defence industry – but it can still work as an incentive, as a bonus, as what makes member states come together.”
She added:
“The real funding for a stronger defence comes from member states. And that funding will increase over the years to come. So what we can do here is to enable that funding to be spent in a better way, that we get more value for money, and that more relatively speaking is being spent in Europe as well.”
“With war on our borders, if not now, then when?” she said.
Updated
Thierry Breton, the EU’s internal market commissioner, has emphasised that boosting Europe’s defence industrial base is of “existential” importance and that the issue of financing will have to be discussed.
The European Investment Bank should change the way it works, he argued, to underpin the investments for production and development in the defence sector.
Updated
Strategy will support better spending, commission chief says
Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president who is expected to get a second term after June’s EU election, said that the defence industrial strategy presented today “will support Member States to not only spend more, but better, together and European.”
It will also “link Ukraine’s know-how with our defence industry to facilitate innovation,” she said.
Today we set our vision for defence readiness with Europe’s defence industrial strategy.
— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) March 5, 2024
It will support Member States to not only spend more, but better, together and European.
And link Ukraine’s know-how with our defence industry to facilitate innovation.
Speaking to reporters, the internal market commissioner, Thierry Breton, said that there is no talk of taking away from member states competencies on defence and that there is no talk of changing the EU Treaties.
Along with the new strategy, the Commission has proposed a European Defence Industry Programme to “bridge from short-term emergency measures, adopted in 2023 and ending in 2025, to a more structural and longer-term approach to achieve defence industrial readiness,” the Commission said in a statement.
The programme will mobilise €1.5 billion of the EU budget for 2025-2027.
Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, said during the presentation of the Commission’s new strategy that “peace is no more a given” and “the Russia war of aggression has brought a great sense of urgency to step up our industrial defence capacities.”
Updated
EU Commission unveils new defence industry strategy
The European Commission has now presented its new European Defence Industry Strategy and a proposal for a European Defence Industry program.
Speaking to reporters, Margrethe Vestager, the Commission’s executive vice-president, said the move is designed to “respond to the changes of Europe’s security paradigm.”
The Commission said the new strategy is aimed at “supporting a more efficient expression of the Member States’ collective defence demand” as well as “securing the availability of all defence products” and “ensuring that national and EU budgets support with the necessary means the adaptation of the European defence industry to the new security context.”
Goals also include “mainstreaming a defence readiness culture across policies, notably by calling for a review of the European Investment Bank’s lending policy this year” and “developing closer ties with Ukraine through its participation in Union initiatives in support of defence industry and stimulating cooperation between the EU and Ukrainian defence industries.”
The Commission’s plan also sets new indicators to measure progress.
These include procuring “at least 40% of defence equipment in a collaborative manner by 2030” and “make steady progress towards procuring at least 50% of their defence procurement budget within the EU by 2030 and 60% by 2035.”
Updated
The EU is proposing its first ever EU defence industrial strategy today in an urgent bid to rebuild capacity to fend off potential future attacks from Russia.
The move will mark the end of post-war peacetime defence strategy in Europe which has seen production of ammunition and battlefield hardware such as tanks being wound down.
It also comes five years after Emmanuel Macron suggested a European army and after recent warnings by the French president and others that the EU had to become independent in its defence particularly with the prospect of Donald Trump coming to office in November.
Officials at the European Commission said they were able to “remedy” the lack of a defence policy in the last two years but had identified three gaps, including a large financial black hole.
Officials calculated that if the bloc had spent 2% of its GDP on defence in the last 15 years it would have spent €1trn. “This gives an idea of the financial realisation” that is needed, said an insider.
Immediate funds it is hoping to secure on joint agreement of member states is €1.5bn but defence commissioner Thierry Breton has talked about the need for a budget of €100bn.
Officials said the new strategy was “ground breaking and adds quite considerable ambition” to the hastily put together defence strategy that has been put in place in the wake of Russia’s attack on Ukraine and largely dominated by bigger states such as Germany in bilateral contributions.
The strategy is also designed to give defence manufacturers in Europe and elsewhere the commercial confidence there will be orders in place long beyond the end of the war in Ukraine.
The EU has recently been criticised by Ukraine for missing a target of supplying 1m rounds of ammunition by spring. This is now expected to be met at the end of the year.
'Just borrow the damn money', expert says as EU prepares for defence investment boost
Max Bergmann, director of the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told the Guardian this morning that “this is a very important moment for not just the EU but for NATO and European security.”
“European defence is in a disastrous state not just because European countries don’t spend enough but because they don’t coordinate their spending,” he said.
Bergmann added:
This means European defence is far less than the sum of its parts.
The EU can therefore play a critical role in doing what the EU does best: breaking down barriers to cooperation and getting Europeans to actually coordinate on what they buy.
NATO doesn’t do this and the end result is a bunch of European militaries that struggle to deploy and fight together.
But like some EU capitals, he also cautioned about the question of money.
The big issue though is funding.
1.5 billion euros is not going to cut it. The EU has to incentivise cooperation and needs 10x that.
The most logical way forward is for the EU to just borrow the damn money through Eurobonds.
It’s stunning that Estonia and Poland are supportive. The key obstacle is Berlin though, which seems opposed to any funding at the EU level, which is astonishingly shortsighted.
Updated
The European Commission will hold a press conference to present the new European Defence Industrial Strategy and European Defence Industry Programme.
Stay tuned for updates.
Defence strategy to be unveiled today
The European Commission is set to present today its new European Defence Industrial Strategy.
The move comes at a time when Ukraine is experiencing a serious ammunition shortage, and as European countries grapple with the question of what Donald Trump’s possible return to the White House could mean for both Kyiv and transatlantic security commitments.
But while for the most part there is agreement in Europe that it needs to step up on defence, and that defence production needs to urgently be ramped up, there are still divergences in views on how to get there – and in particular on how to fund new defence efforts.
The strategy unveiled today is thus expected to be one milestone in a long policy debate.
Three EU countries push for more defence investment, warning of 'race against time'
Estonia, France and Poland have issued a call for “urgently” increasing Europe’s defence readiness.
In a document seen by the Guardian, the three countries outlined their priorities for the new European Defence Industrial Strategy.
“We must ensure that the ambition of the Strategy is proportionate and backed by concrete actions that support our combat capability,” they said, adding: “we are in a race against time.”
The three countries said the strategy should aim to:
• Improve the long-term capacity of EU defence industry to provide for the needs of our armed forces, reduce strategic dependencies, and enhance the ability to scale up production quickly in times of crises;
• Support a fundamental increase in Member States’ levels of battle-decisive munition stocks, availability of key weapon systems and other capabilities across domains;
• Enhance the EU’s and its Member States’ competitive edge in (military and dual-use) technology and innovation, including by removing bottlenecks, securing supply chains, and improving access to growth finance;
• Strengthen cooperation with and encourage Ukraine’s participation in its defence industrial initiatives.
They also warned about the need for sufficient funding to go with ambitious goals.
We call upon the Commission to present concrete funding options, especially for the period leading up to the next [long-term EU budget]. Inadequate funding now will only mean higher expenditure at a later date.
Defence sector needs access to 'significant' funding, Dutch minister says
The Dutch defence minister, Kajsa Ollongren, said this morning that “we have to unlock the potential of the European defence industry.”
We must learn lessons from the war in Ukraine and invest in the security of Europeans, fight fragmentation by joint arms procurement and promote cross-border production. The defence sector must have access to significant public and private finance and investment.
She also reiterated a call for the creation of a dedicate defence commissioner in the next European Commission.
The European Defence Industrial Strategy marks an important step in bolstering our European defence. We have to unlock the potential of the European defence industry. Therefore, I reiterate my call for a full-fledged Commissioner on Defence, to make Europe stronger and safer. pic.twitter.com/FhzGV6KPB3
— Kajsa Ollongren (@DefensieMin) March 5, 2024
Welcome to the blog
Good morning and welcome back to the Europe blog.
Today we will be looking into Europe’s latest discussions on how to boost defence – and in particular the production of weapons and ammunition.
Stay tuned and send tips to lili.bayer@theguardian.com.
