From words to deeds: what is Europe really doing for military independence from the US?

BrusselsThe consensus is now almost absolute in the European Union. From the Spanish socialist Pedro Sánchez to the German conservative Friedrich Merz, not to mention the far-right Italian Giorgia Meloni, they all agree that the European club must stop depending defensively on the United States. European leaders have lost confidence in the ally that has offered them a military umbrella through NATO since the Second World War and, with each new threat and humiliation from Donald Trump, they proclaim with greater force their desire to become independent of Washington. However, beyond words and political declarations, what is the EU really doing to achieve security autonomy?

"Invest more money in defense and increase our military capabilities," Sven Biscop, director general of the think tank on institutional relations Egmont Institute, responds to ARA. The European bloc is rearming at forced march, to the highest levels at least since the Cold War. European allies – with the exception of Spain – have committed to increasing the percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) allocated to defense to 5% by 2035. That is, in many cases, doubling current military spending.

However, money is not enough. Member states are still very reluctant to cede competences to Brussels in the military field and still operate with twenty-seven almost completely independent armies. Calls for greater coordination or, for example, Sánchez's insistence on creating a European army always come to nothing, without even generating debate.

However, European leaders are beginning to discuss how to guarantee security as NATO did until Trump's arrival. At the last European summit they already agreed on a plan to prepare how they would apply Article 42.7 of the EU treaties on collective defense in case of an attack, which is the equivalent of Article 5 of the Atlantic Alliance, one of the main reasons for the transatlantic military understanding.

For this reason, Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, from the European research center Bruegel, points out that "the disappearance of NATO is a possibility", although he does not believe it will happen – at least in the short and medium term – and predicts that the organization will reinvent itself. "My advice is that NATO needs to be Europeanized," adds Biscop, who believes that European allies "will depend less on the Americans" and, therefore, the Atlantic Alliance will mutate. To achieve this, however, experts advocate for European allies to increasingly occupy command positions within the military organization, moving away from strict control by the Pentagon.

It remains to be seen, however, whether Trump would allow European partners to end up taking more ownership of NATO. "He is asking Europeans to take the reins of their own defense and, therefore, the minimum is that he allows Europeans to occupy leadership positions," says Amanda Paul, from the European research center EPC.

In any case, experts indicate that defense groups or informal organizations are already being created outside the US and the EU that, in the long term, could end up representing the equivalent of a kind of European NATO. One of the examples Kirkegaard gives is the coalition of volunteers for Ukraine, which is a group of European countries – without the United States and with the United Kingdom, which is no longer a member of the European bloc – that have joined forces to provide extra military and political support to Kyiv.

A single war industry

There are more advances in coordination with the arms industry. "The various [state] industries worked more or less in isolation, and one could say that each country manufactured similar equipment. Now they are working more together," points out Paul. Thus, the expert assures that the European military industry works more as a bloc and that there is increasing specialization in countries or regions. "They are starting to produce artillery, tanks, or all kinds of machinery as a single group, not as multiple autonomous countries," he adds.

Brussels has also launched initiatives to strengthen coordination between countries in terms of the arms industry and, for example, it put forward loans worth 150 billion euros to acquire armaments to which state governments, including Ukraine's, could voluntarily join. The condition for accessing this financing was that arms purchases be made jointly with the entire EU and that the armaments be manufactured within the European bloc.

The "Made in Europe" has also been prioritized in all the financing that Brussels offers to state governments for the major rearmament, and Ukraine is even required to buy European armaments with the money from the 90 billion euro loan granted by the EU. However, the European Commission always adds an exceptional clause, and member states can purchase military equipment from the United States that is not manufactured or found within the European bloc.

United States arms purchases

The reality is, however, that it is not precisely an exception. The data at this time is devastating: 75% of the money that EU partners allocated to buying weapons last year went outside the EU, mainly to the United States, according to a recent study by the Atlas Institute for International Affairs with information from PESCO, the European community body for defense cooperation.

European leaders openly admit that there is weaponry that the community industry cannot yet manufacture and that, therefore, it must be imported from the United States. "There are equipment, such as the Patriot air systems or some fighter jets, that European countries still have to buy from the United States," states Kirkegaard. Nevertheless, the expert from the Bruegel research center believes that these percentages of US arms imports will be reduced at a good pace in the coming years, and the European Commission itself points to 2030 as the deadline to achieve autonomy in the arms industry. "Europe has depended for seventy years on the security guarantee provided by the United States. You don't get out of that in a few days, it takes a little while, but we will get there," predicts the expert.