For a little over ten years, the European Union has taken up the issue of the defence industry, based on two worrying observations. First, the European armies, one of whose main missions, the protection of European space, requires great homogeneity, are conspicuous by their lack of standardisation, which handicaps their capacities to support each other and cooperate effectively.
On the other hand, European armies still rely mainly on defence equipment from non-European countries, particularly the United States, which is considerably detrimental to the development of a defence industrial and technological base capable of supporting European armies in the event of conflict.
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, these two major problems have considerably handicapped the potential support of the Europeans to Kyiv. They have thus led to the delivery of a multitude of different equipment, taken from the inventories of the armies, creating a logistical chaos that still handicaps the Ukrainian armies. In certain areas, the opposition of the countries of origin of the weapons has deprived the Ukrainian armies of critical means, however available in Europe.
Above all, it became clear that European industrial capabilities in terms of defense were far too weak to sustain such a conflict, forcing Kyiv to rely primarily on the United States to resist Russian assaults. This dependence raised fears of a collapse of the Ukrainian armies when the American Congress blocked American military aid to Ukraine for more than six months.
In this context, the report on the future of European competitiveness, dealing, among other things, with the European defence industry, was eagerly awaited, in particular to serve as a guideline for the action of the new Commission in this area. It must be noted that while the diagnoses made in this report are the right ones, and the same, moreover, as previously identified, the solutions recommended, on the other hand, are much more questionable.
In this section:
The report on the future of European Competitiveness of September 2024 and its section on the European defence industry
Published on September 9, this report provides a comprehensive overview of all the industrial challenges in Europe for the coming years. Many areas, from Energy to Artificial Intelligence, including transport and the pharmaceutical industry, are thus studied. The 7th of these subjects concerns the European defense industry.
The report begins by setting a balanced framework, specifying that the defence industry in Europe represents an annual turnover of €135 billion, of which €52 billion is dedicated to exports, for half a million jobs within the EU. This sector is presented as essential to the defence effort and the European deterrent posture, while participating in the global technological mix, through cutting-edge R&D.
The diagnosis is implacable: the European Union relies mainly on American weapons to equip its armies.
After which, the various problems and obstacles are identified and quantified. Thus, of the €75 billion invested by European armies from June 2022 to June 2023, in terms of defense equipment, more than €56 billion, or 78%, was addressed to non-European companies, of which €47 billion, or 63%, to American companies alone.
However, in the vast majority of cases, European manufacturers had competitive equipment in terms of performance and price, to meet the needs of European armies.
According to the report, this European appetite for non-European equipment, and American in particular, is explained by the weakness of the response capabilities of the European defence industry, particularly in terms of lead times, leading European armies to turn to "off-the-shelf" solutions, which are more quickly available.
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Congratulations for this clarification! It is clear. The current German worries prevent us from moving quickly in this direction I think. We still have this automobile diplomacy that blocks any European decision. "I sell cars, I have money, so I decide to keep this "American protection"". This hidden reading key has blocked all the progress of the EU for 20 years. It has decreased a little since the war in Ukraine, but it remains a powerful element in all the decision-making chains of Germany and therefore ultimately of the EU. Will it improve? We can hope so. The USA, pressed by events, is tempted to give up. Wait and see... For France, the most important thing is to recover superabundant quantities of electrical energy. This is the best way to recover levers of influence in the EU and in industry in order to balance the accounts.