Introduction

“Please answer the question!” proclaimed newly elected Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Klarissa de Jong. Sitting in an almost empty parliamentary committee room, one of the assembled officials from the Euro- pean Commission retorted: “any decision to invest in capability development through the European Defence Fund is taken by national capitals. We cannot be held responsible for their decisions”. Disgruntled, and annoyed that member state representatives could not be held accountable in the same way, MEP de Jong was dissatisfied with the response. “While I recognise that the Fund did not get the best start back in 2021 with a reduced budget of €7 billion and not the €13 billion you had asked for, the bot- tom line is that the Commission’s own analysis showed that you expected to unlock €4 billion in national investments for every €1 billion spent under the Fund. Tell me, what strategies had you put in place to ensure that you had sufficient member state investment guarantees?”. There was silence in the committee room.

The MEP’s line of questioning, while math- ematically inaccurate, was nevertheless also echoed in a series of think tank commentary pieces that followed the committee hearing (many more watched the hearing online). One report by the Centre for European Security Affairs (CESA) argued that:

“Back in 2018, the Commission asked for €13 billion (actually €11 billion if one uses 2018 prices), but by 2020 this had been cut back to €7 billion. Since 2021, the Commission has had to make do with €2.2 billion for defence research and €4.8 billion for capability development for a 7-year period. The US military spends a simi- lar amount on procuring uniforms, so how was this ever going to revolutionise EU defence? Worse still, and largely owing to the pandemic, the €4.8 billion window has failed to leverage the expected 1:4 factor (some €19 billion) in member state commitments.”

Chaillot Paper, EU Institute for Security Studies, 2021, No. 163

Read it here