Three EU countries push for more defence investment and warn of ‘race against time’ – Europe live | Europe

Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president who is expected to get a second term after June’s EU election, said that the defence industrial strategy presented today “will support Member States to not only spend more, but better, together and European.”

It will also “link Ukraine’s know-how with our defence industry to facilitate innovation,” she said.

The European Commission has now presented its new European Defence Industry Strategy and a proposal for a European Defence Industry program.

Speaking to reporters, Margrethe Vestager, the Commission’s executive vice-president, said the move is designed to “respond to the changes of Europe’s security paradigm.”

The Commission said the new strategy is aimed at “supporting a more efficient expression of the Member States’ collective defence demand” as well as “securing the availability of all defence products” and “ensuring that national and EU budgets support with the necessary means the adaptation of the European defence industry to the new security context.”

Goals also include “mainstreaming a defence readiness culture across policies, notably by calling for a review of the European Investment Bank’s lending policy this year” and “developing closer ties with Ukraine through its participation in Union initiatives in support of defence industry and stimulating cooperation between the EU and Ukrainian defence industries.”

The Commission’s plan also sets new indicators to measure progress.

These include procuring “at least 40% of defence equipment in a collaborative manner by 2030” and “make steady progress towards procuring at least 50% of their defence procurement budget within the EU by 2030 and 60% by 2035.”

Lisa O’Carroll

The EU is proposing its first ever EU defence industrial strategy today in an urgent bid to rebuild capacity to fend off potential future attacks from Russia.

The move will mark the end of post-war peacetime defence strategy in Europe which has seen production of ammunition and battlefield hardware such as tanks being wound down.

It also comes five years after Emmanuel Macron suggested a European army and after recent warnings by the French president and others that the EU had to become independent in its defence particularly with the prospect of Donald Trump coming to office in November.

Officials at the European Commission said they were able to “remedy” the lack of a defence policy in the last two years but had identified three gaps, including a large financial black hole.

Officials calculated that if the bloc had spent 2% of its GDP on defence in the last 15 years it would have spent €1trn. “This gives an idea of the financial realisation” that is needed, said an insider.

Immediate funds it is hoping to secure on joint agreement of member states is €1.5bn but defence commissioner Thierry Breton has talked about the need for a budget of €100bn.

Officials said the new strategy was “ground breaking and adds quite considerable ambition” to the hastily put together defence strategy that has been put in place in the wake of Russia’s attack on Ukraine and largely dominated by bigger states such as Germany in bilateral contributions.

The strategy is also designed to give defence manufacturers in Europe and elsewhere the commercial confidence there will be orders in place long beyond the end of the war in Ukraine.

The EU has recently been criticised by Ukraine for missing a target of supplying 1m rounds of ammunition by spring. This is now expected to be met at the end of the year.

Max Bergmann, director of the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told the Guardian this morning that “this is a very important moment for not just the EU but for NATO and European security.”

“European defence is in a disastrous state not just because European countries don’t spend enough but because they don’t coordinate their spending,” he said.

Bergmann added:

This means European defence is far less than the sum of its parts.

The EU can therefore play a critical role in doing what the EU does best: breaking down barriers to cooperation and getting Europeans to actually coordinate on what they buy.

NATO doesn’t do this and the end result is a bunch of European militaries that struggle to deploy and fight together.

But like some EU capitals, he also cautioned about the question of money.

The big issue though is funding.

1.5 billion euros is not going to cut it. The EU has to incentivise cooperation and needs 10x that.

The most logical way forward is for the EU to just borrow the damn money through Eurobonds.

It’s stunning that Estonia and Poland are supportive. The key obstacle is Berlin though, which seems opposed to any funding at the EU level, which is astonishingly shortsighted.

The European Commission is set to present today its new European Defence Industrial Strategy.

The move comes at a time when Ukraine is experiencing a serious ammunition shortage, and as European countries grapple with the question of what Donald Trump’s possible return to the White House could mean for both Kyiv and transatlantic security commitments.

But while for the most part there is agreement in Europe that it needs to step up on defence, and that defence production needs to urgently be ramped up, there are still divergences in views on how to get there – and in particular on how to fund new defence efforts.

The strategy unveiled today is thus expected to be one milestone in a long policy debate.

Estonia, France and Poland have issued a call for “urgently” increasing Europe’s defence readiness.

In a document seen by the Guardian, the three countries outlined their priorities for the new European Defence Industrial Strategy.

“We must ensure that the ambition of the Strategy is proportionate and backed by concrete actions that support our combat capability,” they said, adding: “we are in a race against time.”

The three countries said the strategy should aim to:

• Improve the long-term capacity of EU defence industry to provide for the needs of our armed forces, reduce strategic dependencies, and enhance the ability to scale up production quickly in times of crises;

• Support a fundamental increase in Member States’ levels of battle-decisive munition stocks, availability of key weapon systems and other capabilities across domains;

• Enhance the EU’s and its Member States’ competitive edge in (military and dual-use) technology and innovation, including by removing bottlenecks, securing supply chains, and improving access to growth finance;

• Strengthen cooperation with and encourage Ukraine’s participation in its defence industrial initiatives.

They also warned about the need for sufficient funding to go with ambitious goals.

We call upon the Commission to present concrete funding options, especially for the period leading up to the next [long-term EU budget]. Inadequate funding now will only mean higher expenditure at a later date.

The Dutch defence minister, Kajsa Ollongren, said this morning that “we have to unlock the potential of the European defence industry.”

We must learn lessons from the war in Ukraine and invest in the security of Europeans, fight fragmentation by joint arms procurement and promote cross-border production. The defence sector must have access to significant public and private finance and investment.

She also reiterated a call for the creation of a dedicate defence commissioner in the next European Commission.

Good morning and welcome back to the Europe blog.

Today we will be looking into Europe’s latest discussions on how to boost defence – and in particular the production of weapons and ammunition.

Stay tuned and send tips to lili.bayer@theguardian.com.