As Europe moves to strengthen its long neglected defences in the face of Russian aggression and looming US disengagement, the decades-old question of whether a common European defence structure is needed is posed anew. The simple answer is that Europe urgently needs more military capabilities and readiness rather than yet more institutions. There is already a European collective defence structure – it’s called NATO. European allies should negotiate a transition with the United States to gradually take more control of European security through this existing institution, with its tried and tested multinational chains of command, political institutions, training and exercising and common infrastructure.
Only if a US administration were to unilaterally withdraw from NATO, or renege on the mutual defence clause in Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, would Europe need either to hijack NATO or to create a completely new common defence structure. It would be wise to postpone that fateful and politically divisive choice as long as possible.
In the meantime, what EU members and other European allies urgently need most are long-range precision missiles, air-and-missile defence, aircraft, naval vessels, tanks, artillery, ammunition, satellites, drones, soldiers, cyber warriors and skilled defence industry workers – and combat readiness.
They also need as common a threat perception as possible, given geographical diversity. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine went a long way towards unifying previously divergent security perceptions in Europe. However, more remains to be done to convince southern Europeans of the threat to the entire Union’s sovereignty and territorial integrity from Russian revisionism, and northern and central Europeans of the security risks of climate change and mass migration for the whole continent.
How Deterrence Works
By linking North American to European security, and nuclear to conventional capabilities, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has deterred aggression and kept the peace in Europe since its inception in 1949. Even today, amid the heightened threat from a revisionist President Vladimir Putin and the heightened uncertainty of a fickle US President Trump, NATO continues to preserve its members from external aggression. To be sure, NATO was unable to deter Russia from its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, because the allies made clear they were not prepared to go to war with Moscow to defend Kyiv. But Ukraine was not a member of the alliance and hence not covered by Article 5.
The Kremlin fears an all-out war with NATO, which it could not win. It has no such fear of the EU, which it considers militarily negligible and politically irresolute, nor of any coalition of European countries without the backing of the United States. Russia’s demands for a new European security order, formulated in draft treaties sent to NATO and the United States in December 2021, sought to roll back NATO’s eastward enlargement since 1997, but not that of the EU.
Absent a credible US nuclear and conventional commitment to European security, Europe would have to develop its own nuclear umbrella, based on the small French and UK deterrents. It would also need to acquire a range of military enablers from satellite intelligence and reconnaissance to strategic airlift, air-to-air refuelling and command, control and communications systems, for which it is dependent on the US military.
The Kremlin fears an all-out war with NATO,
which it could not win. It has no such fear
of the EU, which it considers militarily
negligible and politically irresolute
While EU members theoretically have a duty of mutual assistance under Article 42.7 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU), any European collective defence would have to involve the UK and Norway, which are not EU members, as well as NATO member Türkiye. For that reason, among others, a common European defence structure cannot be constructed under the EU treaty. The presence of three neutral countries – Austria, Ireland and Malta – and two members that lean towards Russia rather than Ukraine – Hungary and Slovakia – also makes that impossible.
The reality of decision making on European defence was illustrated by efforts to set up a security guarantee force for Ukraine in case of a ceasefire. Only an ad hoc coalition of the willing, led by nuclear powers France and the UK – outside NATO structures but with as much assistance from NATO as possible – could fulfill the role, for lack of unanimity in either the EU or NATO.
EU’s Defence Role
The EU already has a plethora of structures dealing with defence. It has a Council of foreign affairs and defence ministers, a military committee (EUMC), composed of representatives of national armed forces, and an international military staff (EUMS). It has a Military Planning and Conduct Capability (MPCC) – a small headquarters staff responsible for the operational planning and conduct of the EU’s non-executive military missions, such as training African forces and assisting Ukraine. The intergovernmental European Defence Agency (EDA), which reports to the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, is responsible for identifying common capability needs and shortfalls, promoting joint research and development, aggregating demand and promoting joint procurement of defence equipment.
The EU is currently engaged in 21 missions under its Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP),[1] ranging from advising on security sector reform in Iraq to training armed forces in Mozambique, Somalia and for Ukraine, peacekeeping in Bosnia and Herzegovina, maritime patrolling in the central Mediterranean and the Red Sea and anti-piracy operations off the Horn of Africa in the western Indian Ocean.
There was fierce debate in the early 2000s about whether the EU needed its own operational military headquarters, sharpened after a rift among European countries over the US-led invasion of Iraq. Germany, France, Belgium and Luxembourg called for such a command to assert strategic autonomy from NATO and the United States. However, the UK and several other Member States opposed a separate EU headquarters as unnecessary duplication with NATO, arguing that countries only had a single set of forces and could not commit them to two separate organizations.
The EU and NATO agreed on complex arrangements in 2003, known as Berlin Plus, under which the EU could use NATO planning and command structures and common assets for crisis management operations of its own where NATO, as a whole, declined to get involved. However, their release requires unanimous agreement among NATO allies. At the first attempt to use Berlin Plus for an EU peacekeeping mission in North Macedonia, Turkey blocked the use of NATO facilities for five months. The only EU mission currently using the Berlin Plus arrangements is Operation Althea, the peacekeeping operation in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
A Rapid Deployment Capacity of up to 5,000 soldiers, envisaged in the EU Strategic Compass adopted in 2022, was officially declared operational in May 2025.[2] The forces are contributed by Member States for commonly funded operations. Designed for a variety of missions, such as stabilization, rescue and evacuation, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, peace enforcement as well as conflict prevention and capacity building, it requires the unanimous agreement of the 27 EU countries to be activated.
The EU also has a significant defence role through its space assets, since the Galileo global positioning and navigation satellite constellation and the Copernicus earth observation system, plus the analysis capabilities of the EU Satellite Centre located in Spain, give the Union the backbone of a dual-use space intelligence capability. In addition, the IRIS2 constellation of secure connectivity satellites, due to be fully operational in 2030, will add to Europe’s space capabilities. However, the Union still lacks the space situational awareness tools that are essential to protect European spacecraft from malign actors.
Whether or not Europe needs to revisit operational command arrangements depends largely on the extent to which the US retrenches from NATO. One option would be for a European officer to take over the role of Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), held by a US four-star officer ever since NATO’s foundation. That would put a European at the pinnacle of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) in Mons, Belgium. However, it could break the link between conventional forces in Europe and the US nuclear deterrent, since SACEUR also has operational control of US nuclear forces in Europe.
European Procurement Authority
The EU, and particularly the Commission, have a bigger role to play through industrial policy regulation and financial incentives in streamlining and boosting defence procurement.
The European Defence Fund (EDF) co-finances multinational defence R&D projects using money from the EU’s long-term budget. That small fund has been supplemented since Russia launched its full-scale war of aggression against Ukraine with the ASAP programme[3] to produce ammunition for Ukraine and the EDIRPA programme[4] to incentivize joint production and procurement by Member States to plug key capability gaps.
The Commission is building a de facto role
as a European defence procurement authority,
since it alone will decide how to allocate SAFE
loans to applicant governments without
any national distribution key or vetos
Because they were created at the end of the EU’s seven year budget cycle, when little money remains to be allocated, these programmes are small in size, if not in ambition. They should be increased to at least 100 billion euros in the next Multiannual Financial Framework, as of 2028, to embed habits of aggregating supply and demand for defence equipment.
The Commission presented a European Defence Industrial Strategy and a European Defence Industrial Programme in 2024 and a RearmEU plan[5] in 2025, offering 150 billion euros in Security Action for Europe (SAFE) loans to Member States, leveraged on the EU budget for joint procurement projects involving at least three countries. The rules state that at least 65% of the value of contracts must be produced by entities from EU countries, Norway and Ukraine, and potentially from the UK if it signs an agreement with the Commission and makes a financial contribution. The remaining 35% can be sourced from third countries under certain conditions, provided the European contractor has “design authority” over the technology, ensuring that the intellectual property is retained in Europe and not subject to restrictions by third countries.
The Commission is thus building a de facto role as a European defence procurement authority, since it alone will decide how to allocate SAFE loans to applicant governments without any national distribution key or vetos. The sums involved remain modest relative to the overall volume of additional defence expenditure required, and some large western European countries may not use the initiative because their national armaments directorates and military commanders want bespoke equipment rather than accept simplified joint specifications and timelines.
Nevertheless, this role could give the Commission a growing influence in shaping the European defence market, enabling it over time to erode the industrial nationalism and protectionism that have blighted past European cooperation efforts. The Airbus A400M military transport aircraft is an example of how not to procure in common, with long delays and cost overruns, due mostly to the refusal to buy engines available on the global market, plus national demands for special versions.
A European rearmament bank, for which several proposals are on the table,[6] could also play a steering role in defence procurement by lending to governments and companies for projects that meet NATO and European capability gaps. The bank would leverage small paid-in capital from member governments to generate large loans. They would be reserved for countries that commit to competitive cross-border tendering, instead of traditional patterns of negotiating work share among countries and contractors.
Most of the proposals would entail concluding an intergovernmental treaty outside the EU treaty structure, but in which the Commission, the EDA and the European Investment Bank could have a role. The Schengen open-border agreement, which began as a treaty among a small number of Member States and was eventually incorporated into the EU treaty, is a potential model for such a defence bank. Through a combination of the SAFE loans, a seat in a future rearmament bank and the regulatory power to press for a competitive internal market and simplified specifications, testing and validation for defence equipment, the Commission could emerge within the next five years as a de facto defence procurement authority if the big Member States let it.
Hijacking NATO
As we have seen, the EU is better suited to handling defence industrial and space policy than military operations, let alone collective defence. Hence, hijacking NATO offers a far more practical operation for European defence than creating a separate dedicated common European defence structure. Where there is a lack of unanimity to use NATO assets, coalitions of the willing led by a lead nation or nations offer the most practical way forward.
What Europe needs most are more military capabilities and a common threat perception. The EU can play an important supporting role in these areas, but it will not be in the driver’s seat.
[1] www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/missions-and-operations_en.
[2] www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/common-security-and-defence-policy-eu-rapid-deployment-capacity-becomes-operational_en.
[3] https://defence-industry-space.ec.europa.eu/eu-defence-industry/asap-boosting-defence-production_en.
[4] https://defence-industry-space.ec.europa.eu/eu-defence-industry/edirpa-addressing-capability-gaps_en.
[5] https://commission.europa.eu/topics/defence/future-european-defence_en.
[6] Taylor, Paul. “Banking on Defence: Can a dedicated bank solve Europe’s rearmament financing dilemma?” European Policy Centre, 22 May 2025. Available at: www.epc.eu/publication/banking-on-defence-can-a-dedicated-bank-solve-europes-rearmament-financing-dilemma/..
Header Photo: A military beach landing exercise at the Rota naval base in Southern Spain which was part of the Crisis Management Military Exercise 23 (MILEX 23) aimed at training the EU’s military readiness to respond to external conflicts and crises. 17/10/2023.
Photographer: Jorge Guerrero. © European Union, 2025, CC BY 4.0