European Union Buys Too Many Defence Weapons Abroad, Mostly from US

European Union countries buy too much of their defence equipment abroad, almost two-thirds of it from the United States.

This is reported by The Associated Press, citing a report on EU competitiveness prepared by former Italian Prime Minister and European Central Bank President Mario Draghi.

The document notes that EU countries are not investing enough in joint military projects. The 27 member states are not able to make the best use of European research and development potential to modernise their armed forces, investing only a fraction of the level of investment in the United States

‘Europe is wasting its common resources. We have a great collective capacity to spend, but we are scattering it across different national and EU instruments... We have not yet joined forces in the defence industry to help our companies integrate and achieve production growth,’ the report says.

Draghi also notes that EU countries ‘also do not favour competitive European defence companies’.

The report notes that between mid-2022 and mid-2023, 63% of all EU defence orders were placed with US companies, and another 15% with other non-EU suppliers. Last week, the Netherlands joined the list of EU members that have ordered the US-made F-35, a large-budget military aircraft.

In 2022, defence research and development spending in the 27 countries totalled €10.7 billion - only 4.5% of the total - compared to $140 billion in the United States, or about 16% of all defence spending.

NATO members, almost all of whom are EU members, have been increasing defence spending since Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014. Their goal is for each country to spend at least 2% of gross domestic product on its national defence budget.