The European Defence Agency was given until May 2022 to spell out the gaps in defence capabilities, and the leaders said they looked forward to the publication of the European Strategic Compass “to provide guidance for action across these security and defence dimensions to make the European Union a stronger and more capable security provider”.
A group of 19 European countries recently co-signed a letter to the president of the European Council and the head of the European Investment Bank, urging them to relax restrictions on financing excluded activities – such as the production of ammunition, weapons, and military equipment – and to explore the possibility of issuing defence bonds.
Since the Nato meeting in Newport, Wales, in 2012 that set the target of defence spending reaching 2% of GDP, Europe collectively has had numerous wake-up calls, commissioned strategic reviews, studies of collective defence capability, and generalised warnings from across the Atlantic.
Following the shock of Trump’s first term, and the dawning realisation that he might return, the EU bureaucracy spoke of the need to Trump-proof Europe – yet with the steam train coming down the track the EU bureaucracy settled for one more strategic discussion and never reacted with the speed and decisiveness required.
Two months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the EU responded with the portentous Versailles declaration stating: “Russia’s war of aggression constitutes a tectonic shift in European history.
