The simultaneous arrival of a new NATO Secretary General and a new EU leadership line-up including the first Commissioner for Defence and Space presents a once-in-a-decade opportunity to reset relations between the two Brussels institutions. The shared goals of strengthening Europe’s defences and resilience, and supporting Ukraine, should guide the relationship.
Conditions have rarely been more favourable. The common threat perception shaped by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, China’s role as Russia’s enabler, and both countries’ hybrid operations against the European Union and member states, make the moment ripe. Moreover, with the United States increasingly preoccupied with an assertive China, Washington needs Europeans to take greater responsibility for their own security.
Former NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, a former prime minister of non-EU Norway, signed three joint declarations on cooperation with the EU between 2016 and 2023. Yet he repeatedly criticised the Union’s defence ambitions and warned in parting remarks against establishing separate command structures or an EU rapid response force, which he said could divert essential resources from NATO.
His successor, Mark Rutte, is a former Dutch prime minister who attended every European Council for a decade and knows all the EU leaders well. His initial pronouncements have sounded much more positive towards EU defence efforts. Rutte can strengthen the partnership provided he treats the EU as a supportive European pillar of NATO, and not as a rival. Yet, major challenges to deeper cooperation remain.
All European states are boosting defence budgets. Most have now reached NATO’s target of 2% of GDP and at least 20% of spending on equipment. Several have exceeded those goals, but far more will be needed to implement NATO’s regional defence plans, especially in the provision of a 300,000-strong high-readiness force to reinforce the eastern flank.
Most of the additional spending has been uncoordinated and national, with a minority spent on collaborative European projects and purchases from European suppliers. In the mad dash for equipment after the outbreak of war, Poland and Germany turned to wherever weapons were rapidly available. The United States ranked highest, but South Korea and Israel were also sought out. This has set back European arms cooperation, deemed too slow and inefficient.
Member states may have signed up to an EU Strategic Compass and pledged in their 2024-2029 Strategic Agenda to “invest more and better together, reduce our strategic dependencies, scale up our capabilities and strengthen the European Defence Technological and Industrial Base”. But that is not the course they are on. There is a big gap between rhetoric and reality.
Several interlinked obstacles are holding back greater European defence integration:
- continued squabbles between Atlanticists and Europeanists over the respective prerogatives of NATO and the EU;
- tension between member states and the Commission over the EU executive’s powers and coordinating role in defence procurement;
- industrial rivalries among member states and their defence companies;
- suspicion of the motives of those pressing for greater EU defence integration. When countries hear “buy European”, many think it means “buy French”, and they resist.
Though the EU has repeatedly affirmed that NATO leads the collective defence of Europe, some at alliance headquarters and among non-EU allies still suspect the EU of seeking to usurp NATO’s role in defence planning and standard setting. They see duplication and little added value in its Coordinated Annual Review of Defence (CARD), prioritisation of key capability gaps, plans to create an EU Rapid Deployment Capacity of up to 5,000 soldiers by 2025, and attempts to promote joint defence R&D and aggregate demand and supply of military equipment.
Although NATO and EU officials work together daily on a wide range of common interests, the unresolved dispute between Cyprus and Turkey prevents formal inter-institutional cooperation and, crucially, the sharing of classified information. NATO cannot give the EU a classified intelligence briefing, even though 23 countries are members of both organisations.
The objectives set out in Article 42.7 of the European Union treaty - a mutual assistance clause more binding on paper than NATO’s Article 5 - cannot be realised without NATO. The future defence of Europe and its global interests can only be achieved with strengthened European military capability within NATO. That strong EU pillar could help preserve the alliance in case of radical change in Washington. Today, many EU member states, especially those that endured Soviet domination, cannot contemplate the defence of Europe without the United States and its nuclear arsenal. Nor can Germany.
The EU needs limited intervention capabilities for crises where the US is not involved. Where possible, these should use NATO command structures under the existing but rarely used “Berlin Plus” arrangements, rather than replicating a separate chain of command. However, if a NATO member such as Turkey were to delay or block that option, the EU would have to create its own operational command.
As soon as they take office, the new Commission, European Council president and High Representative should begin consultations with NATO’s new Secretary General on a step-by-step change in the EU-NATO partnership. They should propose an informal division of responsibility along roughly the following lines:
- the EU will discontinue CARD and focus on helping member states acquire capabilities defined in the NATO Defence Planning Process. Where necessary, it should use its regulatory power to enforce NATO standards for equipment, ammunition and stocks to improve interoperability, with joint European testing and certification of defence equipment instead of separate national validation of each piece of kit;
- the EU will use its industrial policy tools to incentivise joint R&D, harmonisation of national military requirements, and joint European production and procurement of defence equipment. This can be done pragmatically via either the European Defence Agency, NATO’s Support and Procurement Agency, a consortium led by one framework nation, or a coalition of the willing;
- the EU will mobilise financing for an agreed-upon list of jointly procured enablers and major military infrastructure and equipment, including air and missile defences. This can be financed through joint borrowing leveraging the EU budget, by changing the statutes of the European Investment Bank to permit financing of military equipment, and by drawing institutional and private investors into joint defence instruments;
- the EU will prioritise PESCO projects with direct relevance to NATO’s collective defence such as military mobility, cybersecurity and secure field communications. It will target the Connecting Europe Facility and structural and cohesion funds to support the creation of defence corridors and logistics hubs;
- the EU will open projects under the European Defence Fund and the planned European Defence Industrial Programme to candidate countries and European third countries (Ukraine, UK, Turkey, Norway) that pay in on a case-by-case basis and accept the EU’s institutional framework for cooperation (including the retention of intellectual property in Europe);
- the EU will take the lead in setting and enforcing resilience standards for energy, infrastructure and networks through public-private-civil society consultation, taking into account NATO’s resilience guidelines and drawing on Finland’s best practice;
- the EU and NATO will harmonise their work on strategic communication and combating foreign information manipulation and interference, adopting a single methodology and interoperable technology to enable rapid detection and responses to hybrid attacks.
This ambitious agenda leaves many questions unresolved, particularly around the role and interests of non-NATO EU countries and of non-EU NATO members. But the notion of an EU defence separate from NATO is an illusion, as is the idea that NATO can keep its one billion citizens safe without major help from the EU. Discarding both pretences would be a start to building a new deal.
Paul Taylor is a Senior Visiting Fellow in the Europe in the World Programme at the EPC.
The support the European Policy Centre receives for its ongoing operations, or specifically for its publications, does not constitute an endorsement of their contents, which reflect the views of the authors only. Supporters and partners cannot be held responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.