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.
