According to the decision taken at the EU Leaders' Summit held in France on March 10-11, the EU Commission announced to the public its plan called "Defence-EU", which analyzes the investment gap in defense and what needs to be done in defense expenditures, and offers suggestions.
The core of the plan is the idea of "spending together, spending more efficiently and investing in the European defense industry".
The plan includes objectives such as establishing a task force urgently for joint defense purchases, coordinating the demands of EU members for defense procurement, preventing overlapping orders, and preventing price increases.
The EU administration plans to propose "VAT exemption on joint expenditures" to encourage member countries to purchase joint defense.
Within its short-term plans, the EU envisages allocating 500m euros to support joint supplies in 2023 and 2024 to meet urgent needs.
In the medium term, a consortium will be established to jointly develop and purchase defense systems.
Priority: Reinforcements to stockpiles, Soviet weapons and air defense
In this way, the EU urgently wants to close the capacity gaps. In this context, there are 3 primary focus points among the targets.
These are replenishing the declining stocks of weapons, replacing the military systems from the Soviet era, especially in Eastern European countries, and strengthening the air and missile defense systems.
Reason: Addiction, messy spending, lack of investment
According to EU officials, the reasons that pushed the EU to prepare the "Defense-EU" plan are the EU's dependence on the defense industry, which became more evident after Russia's attack on Ukraine, its scattered expenditures and lack of investment.
Drawing attention to the lack of joint investment, the EU Commission draws attention to the fact that the defense industry has a divided demand and supply structure among the member states, and that it is dependent on other countries for key defense systems and raw materials.
More than 60 percent of the EU's European defense procurement budget in the 2007-2016 period was imported from non-EU countries.
Due to the fact that war scenarios are being talked about in Europe again, the EU administration wants to increase the production of the European defense industry.
Demands to increase defense investments
Another issue that the EU Commission draws attention to is the "lowness" of defense expenditures and investments of European countries.
It is pointed out that in the 1999-2021 period, the total defense expenditures of EU countries increased only by 20 percent, while the USA increased these expenditures by 66 percent, Russia by 292 percent and China by 592 percent.
According to EU officials, 1.1 trillion euros would have been spent on defense if member states spent 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense during the 2006-2020 period. 270 billion Euros of this amount would go to investments.
