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ABSTRACT
In the last twenty years, the EU has made increasingly greater efforts to boost defence cooperation among MS. To strengthen the EDTIB and avoid duplication of capabilities, the EU has encouraged “European preference” in arms procurement and MS’ defence collaborative projects, also by seeking to expunge defence offsets from the single market. Against this backdrop, on 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. What impact has the war in Ukraine had on EU defence cooperation? Has the war impacted MS in a similar fashion or unevenly, reinforcing defence integration dynamics for some, while kickstarting disintegration for others? Two years on, a thorough analysis of the impact of the war on EU defence cooperation is still missing. This paper fills this gap by exploring three levels of analysis – arms collaboration, arms procurement, and offsets – and by comparing pre-invasion evidence with data from the post-invasion period. The analysis suggests that the Russo-Ukrainian war has negatively impacted EU defence cooperation, potentially increasing both fragmentation and non-EU dependencies. However, although MS’ threat perception and their ability to reap industrial benefits remain important to explain EU defence cooperation, integration or disintegration dynamics do not neatly map onto the geographical or size divides identified by the literature.
Acknowledgments
I extend my sincere gratitude to the attendees of the 2022 public lecture organized by Metropolitan University Prague (MUP) and chaired by Oldrich Bures. Similarly, I want to thank the attendees of the workshop titled “The Russo-Ukrainian War: Impacts, Responses, and Multiplier Effects,” hosted by the University of Southern California (USC) and held at Masaryk University, Brno (Czech Republic) in mid-2023. Special thanks are owed to Carol Wise for her gracious invitation.
I also wish to express my appreciation to the chairs, fellow panellists, and attendees of the European Initiative for Security Studies (EISS), the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR), and the Società Italiana di Scienza Politica (SISP), with particular mention to Brendan Flynn and Ana E. Juncos.
Lastly, I am deeply grateful to the series editors, especially Soul Park, and the three anonymous reviewers for their invaluable feedback and guidance throughout the revision process.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Observers have estimated an increase of EU members' total defence spending of almost €70 billion per year (Camporini, Nones, and Marrone Citation2022). However, strategic consulting company McKinsey notes that, under a scenario where inflation averages 5 percent from 2022 to 2026, the cumulative loss of MS' buying power could be close to €300 billion (McKinsey Citation2022).
2 There exists recent scholarship that investigates “the changes in defence supply and demand in Europe following the Russian invasion of Ukraine” (Calcara, Gilli, and Gilli Citation2023). However, said scholarship does not specifically address the impact of the Russo-Ukrainian war on EU defence cooperation but instead highlights “the trade-off between prioritizing short-term readiness over long-term innovation and vice versa” (Calcara, Gilli, and Gilli Citation2023).
3 It is worth noting that there is no generally agreed definition of large or small states. However, conventionally, when it comes to the European defence industry, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Sweden (in addition to the UK) are considered large states, whereas all others are referred to as small states (Mawdsley Citation2008).
4 By “high-end PESCO projects” I refer to “high-value, strategic, complex weapons systems” (the wording is the European Parliament’s, see European Parliament Citation2020) such as helicopters, corvettes, etc. as opposed to ammunition, enablers, logistics and training.
5 The intention to join is assessed by (the members of) OCCAR. Before actually joining, the Netherlands will go through a parliamentary treaty procedure (Defensie Citation2023).
6 SIPRI Arms Transfer Database does not include low-end military equipment such as, for instance, ammunition.
7 Other, more sophisticated methods such as MILEX analysis of panel data regression analysis could not be employed as countries' military expenditures generally lump together arms procurement with personnel costs such as salaries and pensions.
8 Net of procurement from domestic suppliers.
9 The latest available CARD report at the time of writing.
10 See Appendix for the acronyms.
11 Although the CTO database is only available for internal use by reporting staff, the author sought and obtained approval from CTO to access the data.
12 does not include component production agreed as workshare in joint development projects (i.e., workshare agreed by Denmark -a level III partner in the Joint Strike Fighter programme- in connection to Copenhagen’s 2018 F-35 buy).
13 As shown in , the lion’s share of non-EU weapons is provided by the US and Israel, followed at a distance by South Korea, the UK, and Norway. A few others account for significantly smaller share.
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Jonata Anicetti
Jonata Anicetti is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Security Studies, Metropolitan University Prague (MUP), and he has a PhD in international relations from the European University Institute (EUI).