29-07-2025
INTERVIEW: Europe's armies at ‘50% of what we need', says defence commissioner
The EU's top defence official has warned that European militaries are operating at just half the strength NATO requires, while urging governments to slash their reliance on American weapons and spend more at home to rebuild their forces. Andrius Kubilius, the commissioner overseeing defence and space policy, told Euractiv in an interview that European armies 'are at 50% of what we need to have now, according to NATO's targets', emphasising the scale of rearmament investment needed.
The European Commission is setting out plans to spend big on defence and encourage countries to borrow together to bolster their military procurement programmes through initiatives such as SAFE, which aims to mobilise €150 billion in loans.
Some 40% of EU defence budgets are now being spent on arms made by the US, which works out to around €800 billion, he said. That's down from around 60% a year ago.
'I cannot imagine that we will not buy anything American anymore, but diminishing that number by 10% or 20% means that a huge amount of money will stay for the European industry,' Kubilius said.
The commissioner said he hopes to reduce that share even further, by steering capitals towards spending more with European firms: 'If we manage to incentivise member states also to spend more on European products, it means less for American products, slowly.'
Joint military procurement among EU countries – a top European Commission objective – can drive down costs, Kubilius argued: 'If member states are going for joint procurement, which means bigger contracts, on average production price goes down to 70%.'
In the European defence industry, Kubilius noted that some mergers are already under way, and said further consolidation could help make the sector more globally competitive.
European Defence Union
Kubilius said he plans to push forward with plans to build a European Defence Union in the autumn, that would include Norway, the United Kingdom and Ukraine, he said, when he should also brief the bloc's leaders on what they need to do by 2030 to make their militaries war-ready.
As part of that effort, the former Lithuanian prime minister drew a comparison with the 'European Energy Union' as a possible model for how an EU-driven defence structure might be built: 'We can borrow some examples from that experience.'
The Commission has proposed €131 billion for defence and space in its next budget for 2028–34, though Kubilius declined to provide a detailed spending breakdown, citing ongoing discussions.
He said the figure would also cover raw materials and other critical areas.
'We have our estimations of what, ideally, we would need, and €131 billion is not far away from that. But we need to understand that a majority of the money for defence is coming from the national level,' Kubilius said.
(bts, aw, jp)
