A few days after Vladimir Putin despatched Russia’s invading forces into Ukraine in February 2022, the EU’s then overseas coverage chief, Josep Borrell, requested his workers for an pressing army assist plan. They got here up with €50m (£41.4m) to assist Ukraine.
“And I said: ‘Are you crazy? We are talking about a war,’” Borrell recounted in late 2024, shortly earlier than standing down. “Do you know what does it mean, a war? Put three zeros behind! … And then we started taking things seriously.”
Now, on the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion, the EU is as soon as once more being requested so as to add zeroes to army budgets and get severe, this time concerning the defence of not solely Ukraine however the entire continent, because the certainties of the postwar order crumble.
European leaders, shocked by Donald Trump’s swift concessions to Putin and falsehood-laden tirade in opposition to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, are going through a bitter actuality. Europe fears an unjust settlement shall be imposed on Ukraine, whereas a resurgent Russia threatens the safety of the continent. Nations in central and japanese Europe have lengthy warned that Putin is not going to cease at Ukraine and have been essentially the most vocal in highlighting Russia’s disinformation, sabotage and assaults on Putin’s enemies on European soil.
“Europe’s security is at a turning point,” mentioned the European Fee president, Ursula von der Leyen, arriving in Paris final week for disaster talks. “Yes it is about Ukraine – but it is also about us.”
Even now, some worry Europe is reluctant to confront the modified actuality. “There is still a belief that the United States is the pillar to European security,” Ivo Daalder, a former US ambassador to Nato, mentioned in an interview on Tuesday, after Trump’s name with Putin and earlier than the US president’s assault on Zelenskyy.
“Wake up, Europe!” he mentioned. “Be ready, and be ready to defend yourself, and do not immediately say we can’t do this without the United States. The United States may not be there. It may not be a trustworthy ally. It may, in fact, decide not to come to Europe’s aid.”
Daalder co-chaired a transatlantic taskforce convened by the Harvard Kennedy Faculty’s Belfer Heart that revealed a report this month urging Europe to take extra accountability for its personal defence. The suggestions embrace spending 3% of nationwide revenue on defence, properly above the present Nato minimal of two%. Greater than a decade after that 2% goal was set, seven EU international locations are nonetheless lagging, together with Spain and Italy.
These lots of of billions in new funds may very well be poured into a number of tasks: rising the readiness of Europe’s giant fight forces; build up a six-month stock of ammunition, gasoline and spare components; buying “strategic enablers” – a protracted listing of sources which are missing in Europe resembling intelligence, maritime patrols and air-missile defence methods.
Kajsa Ollongren, a former Dutch defence minister who was on the taskforce, mentioned there may very well be “no more excuses” on defence spending. “This is a crisis” and “an actual threat to our security”, she mentioned, insisting governments should discover methods to pay for defence, regardless of pressures on budgets at a time when the European financial system is within the doldrums. “We have no choice, and we have to act at speed of relevance, which is much quicker than we normally do things in Europe,” she mentioned.
The best way to greater defence budgets is being cleared by the European Fee, which polices EU member states’ debt and deficits. On the Munich Safety Convention final week, von der Leyen, a former German defence minister, introduced that the EU govt was able to loosen up its fiscal guidelines “in a controlled and conditional way” to permit member states to “substantially increase their defence expenditure”.
Many member states would additionally like a defence model of the €750bn Covid restoration plan, the place the EU launched into unprecedented joint borrowing. Germany, backed by its frugal ally the Netherlands, is opposed, though the frontrunner to be the following German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has signalled openness to discussing the concept. In an interview with the Guardian and different newspapers earlier this month, the European Council president, António Costa, mentioned it was too quickly to exclude any answer, though he added: “We should not fix on only one solution.”
Obstacles are legion. Widespread borrowing requires a standard determination on repaying debt. The EU has no plan for find out how to repay the €30bn annual restoration plan debt and curiosity that shall be due from 2028, a sum equal to twenty% of the annual EU price range.
Nick Witney, a former chief govt of the European Defence Company, mentioned extra focus was wanted on what defence spending was for. “We have no agreement on what the key capability priorities are,” he mentioned. “Everybody in Europe has at least accepted that we are woefully vulnerable to air and missile attack in this new world of drones and cruise missiles and hypersonic missiles,” though he identified that Europe had three separate – and conflicting – air defence proposals. “The idea of Europeans converging and pooling their efforts and resources as logic demands is still very far from being realised.”
After years of rivalry between Nato and the EU over defence, a clearer division of labour is rising. Nato will stay liable for army deployments and technique, whereas the European Fee is carving out an even bigger function protecting “back office” capabilities resembling procurement and growing Europe’s depleted arms business. A defence white paper from the fee on 19 March is predicted to set out concepts, with selections by EU leaders forecast at a summit in June.
The stately timetable of Brussels is a world away from the brutal realities of the Ukrainian frontline. Extra instantly, the EU’s overseas coverage chief, Kaja Kallas, is urging European nations to ship Ukraine army assist, together with a minimum of 1.5m rounds of ammunition, air-defence methods, missiles, drones and coaching to Ukrainian brigades, based on a leaked paper that shall be mentioned by EU overseas ministers on Monday.
However even earlier than Trump’s overtures to Putin, western European diplomats have lengthy privately conceded that Europe wouldn’t fill the hole left by any withdrawal of US army assist for Ukraine. Whereas European nations are divided over sending troops to Ukraine, Zelenskyy has concluded “security guarantees without America are not real security guarantees”.
Witney, who’s now on the European Council on International Relations, has a dismal prognosis. “The period when we were happy to entirely empty the shelves of our storehouses and send it all to Ukraine, I think maybe is coming to an end,” he mentioned. “People are increasingly thinking, no, we need to make sure our own armed forces are capable of offering decent deterrence to the Russians.”
Daalder, the previous Nato ambassador, mentioned one of the best ways of convincing Trump to remain concerned in Ukraine was for Europe to put out an in depth plan and timeline about taking extra accountability for its personal defence. But when Trump turns his again on Europe, “you still have to do it”, he mentioned.
Nato might survive with out the US, he mentioned, highlighting that it was as much as the opposite 31 members, who’re nearly all European nations. “The question is not whether Nato can survive. The question is whether Europe is willing to do what it takes for security to be strengthened and supported by Europeans, for Europeans.”
