By: Sam Soetenhorst
With an increasingly more hostile and dangerous world, it is clear that Europe needs to up its military game. As a means to achieve this Europe is now the world’s largest importer of arms according to the Swedish research institute Sipri. To increase its military capabilities, alongside ongoing arms imports, the EU also needs a broader strategy. This is why the European Commission has published ReArm Europe Plan/Readiness 2030 in March 2025. But what exactly has the Commission set out to do by launching this plan and to what extent is the plan actually sufficient to meet their goals?
Exact goals and ambitions
The number one priority of ReArm Europe is creating deterrence. The goal, according to the European Commission, is to protect the European Union from those who wish to do it harm and secure its peace, democracy and prosperity. To achieve this, European defence needs to be up to scale in 2030. The EU needs its member states to invest collectively in their national defence. A “once-in-a-generation surge in European defence investment” is necessary. The scope of the investment: €800 billion. This amount is split up into two parts. €150 billion in joint borrowing using the European budget and €650 billion of additional spending by individual member states, the EU’s budgetary discipline framework will not apply to the latter.
The ‘White Paper for European Defence – Readiness 2030’ outlines how the money will be spent. In the short term it means replenishing stocks of ammunition, weapons and other military supplies. In the long-term this means addressing gaps in critical capability areas and building up the European technological and industrial defence base, according to the European Commission. The EU’s Readiness Roadmap outlines how these goals are to be achieved. The roadmap is split up into five parts. Number one: Closing Europe’s capability gaps by 2030. This part of the roadmap is focused on supplying the EU with missing military capabilities. Milestones of this plan are to let joint procurement reach a level of 35% by 2030 and ensure that at least 55% of the total defence investments are spent within EDTIB, the European Defence Technological and Industrial Base. This also addresses closing capability gaps.
The second part of the Readiness Roadmap is called Launching European Readiness Flagships, this part is split up into four flagship projects. The first is the Eastern Flank Watch, which is a defence initiative focused on the EU member states along the eastern border meant to increase its defence capabilities. This flagship project consists of a “ground wall” and a “drone wall”. The ground wall consists of means to hinder ground forces, and the drone wall consists of anti-drone capabilities.
The drone wall of the Eastern Flank Watch project is also part of the second flagship project: the Drone Defence Initiative. Its objective is to create European border defence capabilities using surveillance systems, drones, counter-drone, and electronic warfare capabilities, precision strike systems and responsive operational coordination. Andrius Kubilius, European Commissioner for Defence and Space, points out that these are currently severely lacking. He also argues that the EU needs to learn from Ukraine on how to implement drone-related measures. The third flagship project is the European Air Shield. It will create a European Air Shield that is fully compatible with the NATO Command and control system. The fourth and final flagship project is the European Space Shield, which is supposed to enhance European space capabilities for defence purposes.
The third part of the Readiness Roadmap is building a solid European defence industry. The policy communication “EU Defence Industry Transformation Roadmap: Unleashing Disruptive Innovation for Defence Readiness” goes into detail on the plans. According to the policy communication building up the European defence industry comes down to three key issues: connecting the defence and the tech community, accelerating the implementation of advanced tech into the military capabilities of member states, and increasing defence production capacity by implementing so-called “disruptive industrial advanced manufacturing solutions”, which basically means implementing technologies like AI to enhance production. The policy communication also mentions reskilling workers to work in the Defence industry and setting up multiple funds to boost the defence industry.
The fourth part of the Readiness Roadmap is integrating the Ukrainian defence industry into Europe’s to boost Ukrainian and European defence. The fifth and final part of the Readiness Roedmap entails creating an EU-wide defence market with simplified rules across the Union and deepening military cooperation within the EU by establishing an EU military mobility area with shared rules and procedures to allow the unhindered transport of military resources throughout the EU.
Flaws
While the roadmap is extensive, doubts remain about whether it can deliver its intended results. A point of criticism is that some of the spendings might not have the full intended effect. Political analyst Lenin Navas points out that of the €800 billion in spending, €650 billion is spent by individual member states. The European Commission has limited influence on how national governments spend this €650. He mentions how countries like France are likely to invest this in the European defence industry by buying weapons from French manufacturers, but that countries like Poland and the Baltic States could be more likely to purchase US weapons off-the-shelf. This would mean that European countries would be upping their military capabilities, but the European defence industry might miss out on investments from countries that are not buying from European manufacturers. This could lead to European defence industrialists not being able to fully scale up and not reap the economic fruits scaling up bears, since this would reduce costs and make it cheaper to produce military equipment.
According to a policy brief by the think tank Breugel, an integrated market and scaled-up procurement could cut the costs in half per unit of military equipment. Linus Terhorst points out that part of the scaling effects are caused by the great diversity of European military platforms. For example the great diversity in main battle tanks. The Bruegel policy brief points out that countries in the European Union have over twelve different main battle tanks, which is in stark contrast with the US army, which only has one.
In an interview, Andrea Gilli, lecturer at the University of St Andrews, argues that while the benefits of consolidation are self-evident, there are also benefits to this diversity. Despite reducing the average cost per unit, centralisation of procurement and getting rid of having multiple military platforms also has some problems. “If you take the F-35 for example: the same platform is designed in three versions, one for the US Navy, Air Force, and the Marine Corps. The end result is a very expensive platform. Thus, I am not sure that the evidence supports the claim that total concentration of the demand necessarily reduces costs.
This is not the only concern Gilli has when it comes to centralizing procurement: “Another consideration is that if there would be one single European procuring entity that did all the procurement, the single platform would need to be produced in every single European country thus reducing the benefits of the consolidation of the demand side. Then there is also the problem that if you concentrate the demand and acquisition of the defence procurement you risk having a lack of competition or innovation, which is something we cannot totally neglect. Finally, different European countries might want different weapons. Southern European countries faced different environments from Central and Eastern Europe: a single main battle tank, or a warship for both theaters is going to turn out to be more expensive, thus reducing the cost-advantages from consolidation.”
Ex-commander of the Dutch Armed Forces, Mart de Kruif, who was also interviewed for this article, agrees with Gilli when it comes to seeing the benefits of having a variety of platforms. He points out that having multiple platforms makes them less vulnerable to cyber capabilities. He does however nuance this view by pointing out that the diversity in weapon platforms needs to be scaled back to some extent.
Another point of contention is potential home bias. According to the Bruegel policy brief the steps taken by ReArm Europe towards the collective procurement of military goods are in the right direction, they are however not sufficient to reach the finish line. They point out that the incentives offered by ReArm Europe and programs like the European Defence Fund are too small to prevent home bias in procurement or to enable the coordination of the provision of strategic enablers like military satellites.
De Kruif disputes the argumentation of Bruegel that European countries need coordinated production of strategic enablers to reduce reliance on the United States. Bruegel researchers argue that up until now European countries have relied on the United States for strategic enablers like military satellites and fighter jets. Since the scale of these products makes their already high costs even higher, it is discouraging for EU countries to produce these themselves, thus making it harder to overcome the reliance on US manufacturers. They argue that there needs to be coordination on the production of strategic enablers, not just on procuring them. According to De Kruif the homogenisation of weapon platforms will come naturally, especially when it comes to expensive strategic enablers. He reasons that the high costs of these strategic enablers will force countries to work together on producing them.
What is missing?
Erik Stijnman, a Lieutenant Colonel in the Dutch army and a Senior Research Fellow at Clingendael, points out that the plan is skipping over an important topic: a short-term strategy on the implementation of artificial intelligence in the European military capabilities. He claims that the EU needs to focus on applying AI to existing and near-future military equipment to meet short-term goals, and only after 2030 should the focus be on a more long-term AI-strategy. De Kruif asserts the plan is missing something completely different: structure. According to him it is crucial to coordinate who produces what. “If, for example, the Germans focus on building tanks, the French focus on building aircraft and the Italians focus on building ships you will save a lot of money.”
Finally Gilli thinks the plan is missing strategic planning. ‘The emphasis must be on developing capable armed forces, not on the industry or financial instruments. The EU needs a discussion about strengths, weaknesses, adversaries and competitors. How do we make the best armed forces for these scenarios?’
Edited by: Simone Vlug, Aiyana Vittoria Amplatz
Image Credits: Rafael Minguet Delgado via Pexels