Spend more on defence, spend together and spend in Europe. That’s how European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen wants the EU to become less dependent on the United States and deter any future Russian attack.
The leaders of the EU’s 27 states are in Brussels on Thursday for a summit (yes, another one). This gathering of national leaders had been in the diary to discuss how to make the bloc more of an economic force.
That debate will now be overshadowed by what continues to be the biggest story in town: defence and security.
The leaders will continue to kick around a proposal that has been in the works for a few weeks, to commit tens of billions of euro in military aid to Ukraine this year to help it in the war with Russia.
The more ambitious in the room hope this will see a coalition of “willing” EU states come together to stump up as much as €40 billion. That would be double the amount provided to Ukraine by the EU last year. Matching the €20 billion sent last year is seen as the bare minimum.
The thinking behind the drive to get more ammunition and money to Ukraine is to guard against the possibility of US president Donald Trump cutting off the large flow of military aid the US has been sending to Kyiv.
The contributions of EU states who sign up to fund the Ukraine support package will be calculated based on their gross national income.
This has the potential to cause tension between member states closer to Russia in the east, and others farther to the west and south.
A €40 billion bill would mean Ireland’s contribution – limited to non-lethal military aid for things such as fuel and medical kits – could come to nearly €1 billion.
Poland and the Baltic and Nordic states contribute the highest proportions of their economic output in aid to Ukraine. Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland sit down the other end of the EU table, according to the Kiel Institute think tank.
The budgets of several EU states, including France, are already under a lot of pressure. It may be politically tricky for some governments to sell such drastic increases in the amounts sent to Ukraine.
Italy and Spain have signalled some scepticism about the scale of the proposal. Hungary’s far-right government led by Viktor Orban has said it won’t be contributing and there is a question mark over Slovakia.
An early draft of a joint statement the 27 leaders will be asked to back at the end of the summit says the EU must “urgently” do more to help Ukraine.
This comes on top of recent plans for EU states to spend hundreds of billions of euro more on their own militaries and defence.
The European Commission on Wednesday set out how it felt this big increase in defence spending would be best directed.
The commission’s White Paper on defence said capitals need to get better at buying military equipment together. It said there is a need to fund several big pan-European defence projects.
Decades of underinvestment have left armies depleted and created “critical” gaps in Europe’s ability to defend itself, it said. That is now a problem given the US can no longer be relied upon as an ally under the Trump administration.
The commission paper said Europe needs an “integrated” air-and-missile defence system and needs to build up strategic stockpiles of ammunition. It also suggested developing military drone fleets, given the crucial role the remote controlled devices have played on the battlefield in Ukraine.
The European defence industry is “fragmented” across many smaller domestic markets. The commission proposed making it easier for defence companies to do more business on an EU-wide basis, by paring back national barriers.
As defence policy is set at national level, these ideas will all have to be worked out by the EU capitals.
When following through on commitments to spend much more on defence, governments should try to buy from European contractors and suppliers, the commission said.
French president Emmanuel Macron has been pushing this “buy European” approach, as a way to wean many EU armies off their reliance on US-made weapons and equipment.
Given France has one of the largest defence industries in Europe, it will stand to see a big economic windfall if its neighbours are encouraged to buy local.
The way defence now seems to dominate the EU agenda has caused unease among some commentators.
Gabriel Zucman, a professor from the Paris School of Economics, this week cautioned states against pulling resources from other important areas to spend a lot more on defence. “We are hearing more and more, this bit of music that says that to build the warfare state we need to trim the welfare state,” he said. “That would be a mistake of historic proportion.”
