How Germany wants to kick-start the EU’s rearmament
Taking charge
Germany is ready to take a leading role in the EU’s rearmament drive, pitching itself as the leader for joint arms projects in an outline of how it thinks the bloc should respond to mounting security threats from Russia, writes Paola Tamma.
Context: Brussels is preparing a road map on how to get the EU’s defences ready by 2030 that will be presented to EU leaders meeting in October.
In a leaked policy paper seen by the Financial Times, Berlin sent in its recommendations, proposing to create “collective capability coalitions” — groups of member states that would jointly develop and procure weapon systems across specific priority areas, such as air defence.
“Germany stands ready to assume a leading role,” Berlin wrote.
Most of the joint projects should be aimed at the threat from the east: “Given the persistent threat posed by Russia to the security of the EU, the projects should primarily focus on the protection of the eastern flank,” the paper read.
Germany would also like the European Defence Agency to take on a bigger role as “central matchmaking and co-ordination platform for European procurement needs”, and urged governments to provide it the necessary data to map capability gaps.
Through joint procurement, member states should pool their market power while also aligning standards across national armaments. Crucially, “the projects should be open for Ukraine and for eligible third countries”, Germany said — a jab at France’s push for European preference in defence procurement.
The paper also urges deregulation of arms manufacturing, including easing state aid and competition rules. “Deregulation is all the more important since member states must be able in the future to massively and swiftly ramp up their defence production in a state of defence,” it said.
Finally, Berlin thinks the funding for the projects should not come from new common EU debt, something southern countries have been calling for.
Instead, Germany reiterated its stance that the money should come from an existing €150bn defence loan scheme, and a separate €1.5bn subsidy programme currently under negotiation, as well as national budgets.