Infighting around EU rearmament undermines grand ambitions for European defense

Despite grand plans, the European Union’s hoped-for rearmament remains fully dependent on member nations stepping up their own defenses.

In March, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced an 800-million-euro "Rearm Europe" plan to build out a defense architecture that has depended on the U.S. since the Cold War.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and U.S. President Donald Trump’s subsequent threats to NATO’s security guarantees have alarmed the EU into at least the appearance of action.

While some member states like Poland, Finland, or, more recently, Germany, are putting real resources into defense, the collective EU government is nowhere near becoming a military power. Its efforts at collective armament are already falling victim to the same infighting that has long dogged the bloc’s most ambitious plans, ranging from the Council of Europe’s "European Defense Community" to its failure to mediate the disintegration of Yugoslavia.

Consequently, national governments — not Brussels — are driving European rearmament, now and for the foreseeable future.

"It was the national leaders sitting at the table with (President Volodymyr) Zelensky," Sven Kruck, co-CEO of German drone company Quantum Systems, told the Kyiv Independent, referring to meetings with the heads of Germany, France, Poland and the U.K. in Kyiv at the start of May in advance of a prospective "coalition of the willing" to protect Ukraine.

"I think we are on the right path with the European national leaders. We are not ready with the European (Union) leaders because they are weak."

Taking up arms

The long-term problem facing the EU is a temperamental U.S. “European states can't rely on the U.S. anymore. That is clear pretty much across the board,” Patrick Gill-Tiney, a Germany-based fellow focusing on major power relations at the London School of Economics, told the Kyiv Independent.

While the problem of the U.S. is clear, potential European solutions are more fraught. The Rearm plan is misleading, says John Foreman, a former military analyst for the EU as well as a one-time U.K. defense attaché in both Moscow and Kyiv. Primarily, he says, that is because Rearm is masquerading as a new source of funding when it is not.

Rearm includes some loans, but is primarily a new EU authorization to member nations to take on more debt independently. Rearm’s 800 million euros is divided into two parts: one at 150 million euros and one estimated at 650 million euros. The 150 million euros is an EU loan offering to EU members as well as a few non-EU neighbors — notably the U.K., Switzerland, and Ukraine — secured by the union’s budget.

The 650-million-euro figure is a theoretical maximum amount that member nations could spend on defense over the next four years under new exemptions to the Stability and Growth Pact. The pact itself limits EU nations’ deficits to 3% of GDP. The Rearm plan authorizes the pact’s “escape clause” to increase deficit spending if that deficit spending is on defense, meaning no penalties for member nations expanding their deficit spending.

The Stability and Growth Pact has been in play since the late 90s. But many EU nations regularly run deficits over 3%. Famously, the pact did nothing to prevent the 2010 Euro Crisis, caused by massive public debt taken on by many of the same nations least willing to spend on defense today: Spain, Italy, and Ireland, as well as Greece, whose large defense spending is mostly out of caution about neighboring Turkey. The Stability and Growth Pact’s penalties are rarely enforced and have never resulted in a fine on a member nation.

"These nations and their defense contractors do not require the EU to tell them that it's okay to rearm," Foreman told the Kyiv Independent, quipping, "It’s great, so now we can doff our caps to Brussels and say, 'Thank you, dear Ursula, for allowing us to spend our own money.'"

The most favorable to the European Union’s proposal will be France and Germany, the EU nations with the largest domestic defense industries, who would therefore be the ultimate recipients of money spent on European-made defense. The rules for Rearm as presented allow manufacturers from the U.K., as well as Ukraine, to participate, but using Rearm funds to buy from non-EU defense contractors will likely draw the ire of the European Commission.

Europe’s traditional defense industries are, however, expensive and heavily regulated. Despite already seeing new orders, there has been a serious lag time in actually increasing production. Yet they remain territorial.

"European militaries are difficult to sell anything to," Mikko-Pekka Hanski, a Finnish investor in Ukrainian defense companies. "The whole ecosystem is fixed and the market is closed, with heavy government influence, with long-term contracts and very difficult procurement."

Even other European nations fond of arming will be less enthusiastic about sending money to the economies of France and Germany to buy weapons that Gill-Tiney says are more expensive and outdated than their American competitors, largely due to economies of scale.

European defense contractors are, moreover, embedded in their respective national governments and territorial about where their respective militaries send their money. Despite their potential profits, even French support for the broader EU plan is in question.

"It looks likely that either we will have a relatively far-right or far-left president of France, and that either way their commitment to arming Ukraine, their commitment to NATO, will be weaker than under Macron," said Gill-Tiney.

Meanwhile, Ukraine is mentioned by name as an acceptable non-EU participant in Rearm Europe. But Ukrainian export barriers mean that during wartime, Ukrainian producers, while eager to be the defense industrial base for Europe, have been sequestered. They also fear that the urgency to stockpile will leave Europe if a ceasefire halts Russia’s active, violent invasion in Ukraine.

League of nations

The history of the European Union is not rich in quick, decisive action, military or otherwise. The EU often deliberately precludes decisiveness. Aside from the formation of a prosperous trading bloc, the EU’s greatest historical success is that none of its members have ever gone to war with each other, in contrast to the preceding millennium of European history.

Long before Trump, the U.S. harangued Europe to provide for more of its own defense. But member nations’ low spending levels are a historical novelty. Prior to 1990, France and Germany spent well over 2% of their GDPs on defense, with the U.K. standing at 4%. Indeed, in the 1960s, even Italy reached 3%, while the U.K. was at 7%. Those figures collapsed along with the Berlin Wall and the fall of the USSR.

NATO nations 20 years ago agreed on a benchmark of 2% of GDP for defense spending, despite commentators often treating that figure as a unilateral U.S. demand on European allies. While Russia’s invasion has added urgency, nations furthest away from Russia fall far short. Ireland spends less than a quarter of a percent.

That failure to meet past defense commitments casts doubts on ongoing grand plans to get NATO members up to 5%, says Gill-Tiney.

"The real issue for a lot of European states is that they agreed to spend 2%, or the NATO members agreed to spend 2%. And many of them then just didn't follow through with their own agreement. The fact that European states actually agreed to and didn't do it, I think is particularly problematic, or was problematic."

Less militarized EU members have already put up barriers to the latest plan for rearmament. Put off by the militarism, and a comfortable distance from Russia, Spain and Italy managed to get the entire plan renamed in its infancy from “Rearm” to “Readiness,” though even official channels are still referring to the plan under both names.

"They renamed it because they don't want to spend it all on arms, they said, 'We want to spend it on arms and soft power,'" as Foreman described it. "This is a very classic Eurofudge, from the Spain that only spends 1.1% of its GDP on defense. They are notorious laggards. And as soon as the idea comes up, they say, 'We will go spend this money on ourselves. We’re not facing Russia's border.'"

Persuading European voters that their money is well-spent on weapons rather than roads and schools is much harder without an immediate threat. And some European governments are quietly hedging for a ceasefire, say experts and industry stakeholders who spoke to the Kyiv Independent.

Leaderboard

Various EU member nations have individually expanded their defense budgets enormously.

Under recently elected Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Germany has emerged as the largest spender in the EU.

Most new German resources are heading for local stalwarts of defense. Rheinmetall, the country’s largest weapons maker, has seen its stock rise tenfold on the Deutsche Börse — a growth figure familiar among tech unicorns but unheard of in an established company, especially one making physical products largely dependent on a market of government contracts.

The high profile of new technologies like drones and electronic warfare has also given rise to a whole new generation of defense contractors in Europe.

"Europe has now understood: It’s not solving the problem of Russia and Ukraine," said Kruck. "It’s solving the topic of how Europe wants to be and how Europe wants to defend itself."

"The investments in Ukraine and in European countries' defense sector show us that the full-scale invasion created a new market," says Hanski. "And parliament members in England or Sweden are now saying, 'How do we get growth in our country?' So many are thinking that security is the growth sector."

But the tightest correlation to increasing defense spending remains proximity to Russia, like Hanski’s native Finland. Serving in the Finnish military in 1994, in the trough of European disarmament, Hanski recalls that exercises were always directed at a prospective invasion from the east.

Even the fastest timelines Europe could manage — for example, a Rheinmetall ammunition plant set to open in Ukraine in the middle of 2026, barring delays — may be too late to help Ukraine in the current phase of the war. Ukrainians are keen to warn that the EU is next on the chopping block.

"We are trying to help Europe actually wake up," as Mariia Berlinska, head of volunteer unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) supplier Victory Drones, put it at a recent panel discussion in Kyiv.

"But I don’t know if they are processing the fact that while this maniac (Russian President Vladimir) Putin is concentrating on us, they have time to ready themselves. Because sooner or later, this demented maniac is going to turn to them."

Author's Note:

Hi, this is Kollen, the author of this story — thanks for reading my latest dispatch on European defense from Russian aggression, reported from a Ukraine that is hanging its hopes on EU allies. The Kyiv Independent doesn’t have a wealthy owner or a paywall. Instead, we rely on readers like you to keep our journalism funded. We’re now aiming to grow our community to 20,000 members — if you liked this article, consider joining our community today.

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