How can the EU be Secure in an Insecure World?
Lenín Navas, YSC Fellow 2024
For decades security was a given in Europe. Since the end of the Cold War, and under the protection of the United States security umbrella, the European Union countries were capable of dedicating themselves to the creation of a true peace region. However, new geopolitical challenges are arising and Europe must be ready to face them. Even though the war in Ukraine was a strong wake-up call, the severity of the security challenge did not accelerate the achievement of the long-desired European strategic autonomy. If Europe wants to stay relevant, the state members of the EU must find ways to guarantee its security through the creation of a new coordination architecture, which includes a common risk assessment structure, and the acceleration of military production with joint investments in European armament and technology.
(c) Simon on Pixabay
The Coordination Challenge
Regardless of the final outcome of the war in Ukraine, it seems unlikely that a cooperative relationship between Russia and Europe can be restored in the short term. Therefore, the security challenges in the region will require a coordinated and sustainable response. This response can come from two sources: Either an increase in the dependency on the US as a security recipient region or the use of the EU structures to transform itself into a security provider.
The second option, even though it is the most attractive, is also the hardest to achieve. Since the 2016 Global Strategy for the European Union’s Foreign Policy and Security, security autonomy has become an explicit goal for the European Commission. However, progress in this area has been limited. There are many reasons behind it, starting with the fact that the European Union is not a sovereign actor, but a community of member states with different strategic cultures and security priorities. This means that even though for every member state the security of the EU is a priority, the degree of urgency and the preferred means to achieve it are different.
In that sense, the EU faces difficult challenges, as eastern countries like Poland do not see European military powers such as France and Germany as reliable guarantors for their security, therefore looking to increase the United States presence on the continent. Meanwhile, Italy, Germany, and France warn the European Commission against violating their rights to define their security policy (Barigazzi and Kayali, 2023).
Towards Shared Strategic Assessments
Accordingly, and to create feasible structures that increase defense cooperation in Europe, it is necessary to understand what is possible, starting with the fact that, at least for the moment, the European Union will not and should not try to assume total responsibility for security from the member states. Therefore, Europe should focus on two achievable goals in the short and medium term.
The first one is the creation of joint strategic assessment structures, with the potential of erasing the differences between Eastern and Western countries regarding risk assessment. Europe as a whole should have a similar understanding of the threats it faces and a largely accepted strategy to manage them, something that can be achieved through current structures like the European Peace Facility (EPF) and the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). However, for this to happen it is necessary to empower the European Defence Agency (EDA) and to establish the new position of a European Defence Commissioner. These measures could ensure the consistency and proper coordination of the strategic assessment process (Brzozowski, 2024).
This process of institutional strengthening would bring two simultaneous effects. First, it would increase confidence between member states, as they all would share a common strategic culture, and therefore the most exposed states in the east of Europe could trust their allies to invest and support them in case of need, as they would also have the same perception of potential security threats. Second, this will unify European positions in the framework of NATO, helping to solve the imbalance that currently exists between the US and its European allies, as the latter begin to speak with a unified voice (Hanna Ojanen, 2022).
Financing European Security
The second goal should be to break the reluctance of member states to pool resources as part of an attempt to integrate security capacities. This would represent a vital step to reduce the levels of fragmentation between the European militaries. Although the EU countries invest large amounts of money in arms purchases, they do so in an uncoordinated manner, which does not necessarily allow them to strengthen the European arms industry and their joint operational capabilities. As a result, Europe does not currently have the capacity to defend itself without American support. The War in Ukraine showed the state of disarray of many European armies, and their difficulties in coordinating with each other without the intervention of the United States (Bergmann, 2024). Counterintuitively, this situation has its origin not in the lack of resources but of political will.
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Central and Western Europe have increased their total military expenditures by 13%, totaling $345 billion in 2022, a number that dwarfs the $86.4 billion spent by Russia (SIPRI, 2023). However, European countries do not coordinate their military expenditures, preferring rather to acquire off-the-shelf equipment, especially American ones, over collaborative investments in research and development at the European level. According to the last Coordinated Annual Review on Defence Report (European Defence Agency, 2022) only 19% of all defense investments are conducted through European cooperation structures. In this context, it is impossible to develop a solid European Defence Technological and Industrial Base (EDTIB) or to create interoperability between armies that would allow autonomous European interventions.
Facing the Future, Investing in Defense
Nevertheless, this situation also represents an opportunity for the creation of a new European security architecture. Just as the European Union is the product of a long process that started with the Coal and Steel Community, this security architecture can also start from very basic immediate interests like equipment acquisition, and build from there.
First, Europe needs to reverse the current trend in which 78% of defense acquisitions come from outside the EU (Grand, 2024). It is necessary to invest in local companies so they can improve the quality of the equipment and be competitive on a global scale. The recently launched European Defence Industrial Strategy (EDIS) and the European Defence Industry Program (EDIP) are good first steps.
However, without adequate financing, this will not be enough. Even the $1.5 billion allocated for the EDIS are is just a fraction of what is needed to shape the European defense industry. Hence, it is critical that initiatives such as EDIS, the European Defence Fund (EDF), the European Defence Industry Reinforcement through common Procurement Act (EDIRPA), and others, are adequately financed in the next Multiannual Financial Framework of the EU and operate under the guide of the Capability Development Plan of the Union.
Finally, these efforts require an efficient bureaucratic machinery to make it work. The biggest impediment to European cooperation structures such as PESCO or EDF use is the complexity of the legislation and timelines behind them (European Defence Agency, 2022). Consequently, the best the EU can do is to adapt and simplify these processes to fit the needs of the member states.
Towards an Autonomous EU
To achieve strategic autonomy the EU must start to reform the current regional security architecture. That implies empowering current coordination institutions like the European Defence Agency, through the establishment of a European Defence Commissioner position with the mandate to create a single strategic assessment for the EU.
However, the institutional reform would be in vain if the EU does not have the capacity to pool resources to develop its own defense technological and industrial base. European armies' goal should be to acquire most of their equipment from providers in the EU to guarantee interoperability and the resilience of the military supply chain. Therefore, the financing and simplification of current structures like EDIRPA, EDF, and EDIS is necessary to incentivize member states to spend more efficiently together.
These two steps have the potential to start the restructuring of the entire European security structure bringing more resilience and autonomy to the European Union institutions. The result would be that, in a more insecure world, the EU will have the capacity to act leveraging the resources of all the member states to protect regional peace and security.
Bibliography
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This article was written as part of the YSC Fellowship 2024. For more information on this year’s fellow programme head here.
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