Common European Defence Capabilities

Russian aggression against Ukraine has made reinforcing Europe’s defence capabilities a priority issue.

Article 42. 2 of the Treaty on European Union (“The common security and defence policy shall include the progressive framing of a common Union defence policy. This will lead to a common defence, when the European Council, acting unanimously, so decides”) introduced the notion of common defence, hypothetically at least.

Europe’s armies will probably keep their national status for some time to come. Their deployment and chains of command are governed by provisions often enshrined in their national Constitutions. In Europe, the armed forces are essentially funded from national budgets voted by parliament, which automatically gives the individual States the right to verify how these funds are being used. In addition, the sole authority for putting soldier’s lives at risk, declaring war and ratifying treaties lies with these States. France is the perfect illustration of this situation, since the Head of State has sole authority over the country’s military deterrence forces.

Conversely, EU military operations can be prepared and executed with the support and involvement of European military capabilities. The European Air Transport Command, in which EU Member States have agreed to pool a substantial proportion of their military air transport resources, is an exemplary first step in this direction.

While, with this first step, resources remain national, it could be followed by a second step where they would not be national but common resources, similarly to Galileo, the European satellite navigation system, the first-ever strategic system acquired and operated by the European Union.

These common resources would be owned by the EU and made available to the armed forces of Member States participating in military or security operations decided by the EU.

European Union ownership begs several questions, however.

First of all, real scenarios, or forward plans, need to be drawn up as a basis, in particular, for establishing the organisation, structures and common capabilities required. For this it will be necessary to build on the elements identified in the Strategic Compass by starting with specific national needs.

The input for this exercise will basically be data provided by the individual nations, which will be all the more inclined to divulge information if they are convinced that they are advantages, especially financial, to be obtained.

Work will have to be carried out jointly by a number of European bodies (EUMS, EDA in particular with the support of OCCAR for programme implementation). This process should enable military requirements and technical solutions to be specified and consigned to documents, one for each system or item of equipment. This would level the playing fields with the Americans, whose systems are compliant with a single set of specifications, giving them a competitive advantage over the Europeans who have their own national specifications, which often differ to allow for national considerations.

Single system definition is also conducive to savings not only in development and production costs but also post-commissioning, provided that in-service support is organised in common and equipment continues to be maintained to common standards throughout its life cycle, as is currently the case with the A400M.

Common equipment acquisition and maintenance may have to be accompanied by the creation of European entities for performing these operations. These European “maintenance, repair and overhaul structures” could also be instrumental in harmonising the national armed force deployment concepts of Member States using this common equipment.

Chancellor Scholz’s proposal to make OCCAR the nucleus of a joint defence and arms system in Europe is a springboard for giving further thought to the above considerations, even though OCCAR’s role should be more that of concentrating on cooperation programmes, joint procurement and arms procurement at EU level.

Secondly, common equipment acquisition and maintenance could be helped by establishing a European military budget, produced by European bodies and put to a vote in the European Parliament. Chancellor Scholz’s proposal to bring together European Ministers of Defence or the Armed forces in the EU Council suggests that it could be possible to consider creating a body at ministerial level to be responsible for producing and managing a common military budget. The European Defence Fund is a pathfinder in this respect. It is, however, financed from contributions that are additional to national budgets and, therefore, continues to encounter the usual difficulties in reconciling military requirements with technical/industrial solutions. Conversely, a purely European budget without input from national budgets would make it possible to limit these national constraints, while not, of course precluding European financial contributions to cooperative programmes or joint procurement by several Member States.

A European defence budget would also be a powerful incentive for organisation of industry at European level, not least the network of defence-related SMEs and midcaps, which should be encouraged to engage in European bidding. The existence of a common corpus of EU contractual conditions should also act as a facilitator in comparison with national contractual arrangements and their disparities.

This European defence equipment budget should be in addition to and not instead of the national defence budgets. This separate budget should be a potentially strong motivating factor in encouraging national defence ministries to support these European efforts. By contrast, if this new budget were simply a replacement, this would have the adverse effect of prompting nations to stick to their existing national budgets. This is an important and sustainable political message that an EU Council of Defence Ministers, supported by the European Council, could usefully seek to convey and that it should strive to enforce.

Member States will continue to maintain substantial national armed forces well into the future. Apart from the military capabilities needed to intervene in the event of conflict, what is particularly lacking in Europe is the legal framework for enabling these capabilities to be put immediate effective use. For as long as there is neither a European legal framework nor an appropriate common European foreign and defence policy, military capabilities, which would, for example, enable crises to be nipped in the bud, will continue to remain the prerogative of certain European States, such as France, for some time to come. But harmonisation of the different national armed forces with access, in particular, to common European resources would already be an enormous step forward in establishing a credible and effective common European defence system.

Olivier Gras

October 2022