Europe Revs Up to Re-Arm
European lawmakers want to double down on defence spending and drone walls
On Tuesday lawmakers in the European Parliament agreed a package of amendments to existing European Union funding programmes aimed at making it easier for the bloc to direct money into bolstering defence and security by 2030.
EU president Ursula von der Leyen announced the ReArm Europe Plan – where the freed up funds will flow – back in March, hard on the heels of US vice president’s confrontational speech at the Munich Security Conference. JD Vance’s warning in the chill February air that Europe must “step up in a big way” on its own defence sent shockwaves around the continent that continue reverberating through European politics.
The draft legislation that got the green-light from the parliament’s Industry, Research and Energy committee on Tuesday will – if fully adopted – enable defence-related investments to be realised through the EU’s Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP), Horizon Europe, the European Defence Fund (EDF), the Digital Europe programme (DEP) and the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), MEPs said in a press release which name-checks a raft of major funding vehicles that wouldn’t usually funnel public money into defence.
The EU’s hope is that its overarching ReArm initiate – which is also being called “Readiness 2030” – will unlock up to €800 billion in defence investment over the next few years. Although the changes to existing funding programmes do still need to be approved by EU countries in the Council during the three-way talks (with the Commission) that cement most of the bloc’s lawmaking.
Parliament backs strategic funding shift
MEPs agreed on changes to STEP that would see the definition of defence technologies broadened to add social resilience, such as critical infrastructure protection, disaster response, and election integrity – putting the funding of online disinformation countermeasures in the frame.
In the case of Horizon Europe, the EU’s flagship R&D funding pot, parliamentarians supported the Commission proposal to support civil applications with a potential dual (i.e. military) use.
The Horizon Europe program (and its predecessor) have historically shied away from support for military research, sticking to a strictly civilian orientation – so if this proposed change to the legal basis gets approved it would represent a major shift.
Parliamentarians also agreed to boost funding rates in the European Defence Fund for SMEs and small mid-caps – which could be a boon for early stage European defence startups – allowing up to 100% EU co-financing for eligible projects. And in another change to EU funding as usual, MEPs supported an expansion of the bloc’s Digital Europe Programme – including envisaging some of the bloc’s big investment in AI training hubs being directed into defence-related AI development.
The bloc’s expanding network of AI factories and (planned) AI Gigafactories were conceived in recent months and years with the aim of boosting homegrown AI development to step up Europe’s startup ecosystem more broadly. So it would also represent a big gear change if some of the EU’s flagship AI training facilities end up being ring-fenced for developing AIs for defence.
Elsewhere under the MEPs’ plan, EU funding for dual-use transport infrastructure is also set to get a boost under the CEF – meaning more public funding flowing into military mobility corridors, fuel supply chains, and logistics hubs. Parliamentarians want to increase co-financing rates to 100%, with a focus on projects related to “hot-spots” and cross-border sections of military mobility corridors, they said.
Another notable shift could fuel the growing momentum around Europe for lawmakers to get serious about digital sovereignty: MEPs also gave their backing to having a preference attached to EU funding, including funding of products and technologies, in order to reduce strategic dependencies on non-EU countries – saying this is necessary to protect the EU’s “strategic and economic security interests”.
Parliamentarians also said they will support the EU to look at how Ukraine’s defence industry could be integrated directly into relevant funding programmes in the future, such as by helping it with efforts to modernise and align with European standards.
Meanwhile, the EU’s ‘drone wall’ revs up
Despite this bracing new kinetic energy on defence spending blowing through European capitals, quizzical eyebrows were raised in Brussels earlier this month after von der Leyen’s recent State of the Union Speech called for Europe to build a “drone wall”. But EU lawmakers appear to be moving forward on this plan too – eyebrows quickly dropping back in line after the recent wave of incursions of (suspected) Russian drones into European airspace.
On Friday Politico reported that the EU was moving forward on the drone wall project. “Today the frontline EU member states expressed their resolution in close coordination with NATO to work together to forge a united response against growing threats from Russia everywhere in Europe,” Defence Commissioner Andrius Kubilius told the Brussel-based media in a statement following a virtual meeting with defence ministers on the bloc’s eastern flank.
Earlier this week the defence commissioner also told EU-focused outlet Euractiv that the drone wall could be ready in a year. Europe should take inspiration from Ukraine’s military and use acoustic sensors to boost detection of incoming unmanned aerial vehicles, Kubilius suggested.