Dr. Samuel B.H. Faure, Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of International Relations at Sciences Po Saint-Germain (Cergy Paris University), Visiting Researcher at the Institute of European Studies at the Université libre de Bruxelles.

Discussions about a European Defence Technological Industrial Base (EDTIB) were already under way at the beginning of the 21st century. Ten years after the annexation of Crimea by Russia, and three years after the start of the war in Ukraine, EU Member States are still spending less than one euro in five (18%) on armaments produced through European cooperation, and there are only two European integrated companies on the continent: Airbus and MBDA. The result, as noted in the recent Draghi report, is a military-industrial dependence on the United States that has increased since 2022. Yet, why has the EU failed to create a EDTIB so far? 

In Europe, the political regime of the defence industry has produced two types of political-industrial preferences, resulting in a persistent fragmentation of the defense industry on the continent. States with a strong and independent defense industry, such as France, but also Italy, Germany and Sweden, tend to value their national companies: Dassault Aviation, Leonardo, Rheinmetall, Saad, among others. On the other hand, States that cannot count on a nationally-developed industrial eco-system – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Danmark, Poland and the Netherlands, for example – have developed the political habit of importing equipment, developed and produced generally in the USA. 

These two “path dependencies” often combine, further limiting the window of opportunity and States’ preferences to choose European cooperation and an integrated EDTIB to arm Europe. In the land sector, the German company Krauss-Maffei Wegmann and the French company Nexter are associated within the KNDS consortium, which remains, however, weakly integrated. In 2024, Italy’s Leonardo and Germany’s Rheinmetall merged their activities to form Leonardo Rheinmetall Military Vehicles (LRMV). In the naval sector, the Naviris consortium has brought together the French company Naval Group and the Italian company Fincantieri since 2020. In 2021, the French government blocked the takeover of French company STX by Fincantieri. In 2023, the Italian government even opposed the takeover of Microtecnica by the French company Safran, before lifting its veto in 2024. The war in Ukraine has not (yet) produced new European champions in the defense industry.

This fragmentation of the EDTIB has been reinforced by the intergovernmental governance of military-industrial policies within the EU. One of the challenges is limited inter-institutional relations and the lack of information flow between the services of the European Commission, the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and the representatives of the Member States sitting on the European Defence Agency (EDA). Moreover, the bureaucratic and political struggles already at work have weaken efforts to consolidate an EU industrial policy in the defence sector despite the institutionalization of the European Defence Fund (EDF) in 2021 through the 2021-2027 MFF and the creation of two other rather smaller budgetary funds in 2023 (ASAP and EDIRPA). 

Simultaneously and outside the EU, European States – mainly but not exclusively EU Member States – have engaged in several bilateral and minilateral “major” armaments programmes such as the tank of the future between Germany and France (MGCS) and that between Italy and the UK (Global Combat Air Program, GCAP), the combat aircraft of the future between Germany, France and Spain, for which Belgium has observer status (SCAF), and the military drone between Germany, France, Spain and Italy (RPAS) or the development project in the field of ground-based drones (UAVs) shared by Germany and the United Kingdom under the recent Trinity House agreement. However, there is a consensus within the expert community that these arms programmes are not yet “too big to fail”. In other words, the hypothesis that these arms programmes will fail and give way to national programmes and/or the purchase of US military equipment is to be taken seriously, particularly in a context of budgetary rigor and national political instability in Europe. 

The need to create a EDTIB however has further increased after the re-election of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States. Yet Europe’s military-industrial regime continues to foster dependence on national companies “from below”, and on US industry “from above”. If political rhetoric on the priority of building “strategic autonomy”, “European sovereignty” and a “geopolitical Europe” is sincere, then it needs to be translated into policy instruments that encourage the conduct of arms programmes in European cooperation, and the creation of “European champions” to integrate the EDTIB. The European integration of the defence industry requires the coordinated work of the European Commission services, the MEPs and the representatives of the Member States within the EDA. The creation of institutional spaces that facilitate their day-to-day work is not a technocratic gimmick but an essential condition for their success. 

In this context, intergovernmental policy instruments produce insufficient effects and can even be blocking. The representatives of the Member States – heads of state and government, ministers, diplomats –  hold the key to breaking the deadlock and understanding that the integration of the EDTIB is not a zero-sum game but can be a positive-sum game for each of them. Their support for supranational policy instruments such as the success of EDIP, the increase in the budgetary volume of the next MFF and therefore the EDF, and the move to adopt qualified majority voting (QMV) in the European Council, would all help to integrate the EDTIB. The project for a European Defence Community Treaty may constitute another suitable way forward to the political integration of a “core state power”.