“Europe is ready to step up,” Ursula von der Leyen, the chief of the European Union‘s executive arm, the European Commission, said earlier this year, as the new U.S. administration signaled it will reel in its long-standing support for the continent.
“We are taking decisive action,” von der Leyen added.
But in the face of uncertainty around the U.S.’s future vision for its place on the continent, there is still no clear plan for defense procurement across Europe, a central European official involved in defense planning told Newsweek.
The process of moving away from dependence on the U.S. has “just started,” they said, adding: “There’s no plan at the moment.”
Most eyes are on the NATO summit in The Hague at the end of June, the first major meeting since U.S. President Donald Trump started Washington’s swivel away from the continent.
The European Commission, the European Union’s executive arm, announced in early March that it would mobilize €800 billion, or roughly $900 billion, in defense funding for member states under a plan dubbed “ReArm Europe.”
But most European planning for defense industry is still done by NATO, a European industry source said. NATO is a military alliance that includes many members of the European Union — a mainly political and economic bloc — with some notable exceptions, like the U.S. and U.K.
Senior Trump officials have pushed for European members of NATO to dedicate 5 percent of GDP on defense. While most officials in Europe concede the continent needs to dramatically pull up defense spending in the face of changes in the White House, they shy away from arbitrary targets like 5 percent, attempting to focus on which capability gaps need to be filled.
NATO’s eastern flank has stormed ahead in the list of priorities, the proximity to Russia feeding the urge to far exceed the alliance’s current minimum target of 2 percent of GDP heading for defense. Western and southern Europe has broadly had a tougher job executing bigger leaps in military spending.
But there is no real cohesion to the defense spending hikes in Europe, officials and industry sources say.
After the June summit, each NATO country will have a firm idea of what it will need to provide for the alliance’s collective security, the European industry source said.
The European Union outlined its priority areas for defense investment in a white paper published in mid-March, which acknowledged the continent’s ability to defend itself was “weakened by decades of under-investment.”
The continent has “critical capability gaps” in several areas, including air and missile defense, stocks of artillery systems and ammunition, the European Commission said.
Europe has struggled to provide air defense batteries, artillery and the shells to keep the systems firing to Ukraine, battling Russia’s full-scale invasion for more than three years.
The European Union must urgently invest in drones and counter-drone systems, according to the white paper, as well as plans to quickly move troops or equipment to a frontline battle and a host of cyber and electronic capabilities.
Europe must quickly find a way of beefing up its stocks of enablers, the white paper said. “Enablers” refers to capabilities like reconnaissance, intelligence, air-to-air refueling and logistics.
The U.S. has shouldered expensive military burdens in Europe for years, including providing logistics, strategic lift, communication, intelligence and reconnaissance capabilities, as well as airborne electronic warfare and stockpiles of munitions.
Europe needs a “once-in-a-generation surge” in defense investment, the bloc said in this document.
This white paper was a “broad mapping” of what needs to be urgently addressed, the central European official said.
But NATO’s new plans, which are likely to address at least some of these specific capability gaps, are not industrial targets for what NATO countries must produce, the European industry source said.
The alliance’s European members can decide for themselves how they come up with their assigned capabilities, including whether they buy systems from other countries, like the U.S., they added.
The “ReArm Europe” initiative puts a heavy emphasis on Europe’s own defense industry, ensuring the continent can produce its own weapons and equipment. The U.S., meanwhile, has made it clear it expects to still be a major player in European defense procurement.
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