EU lidstaten gaan samenwerken op ontwikkeling nieuwe defensietechnologie (en)

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - EU defence ministers have taken a step towards joint planning on defence expenditure and pooling resources to invest in technologies and military materials. The initiative has been conducted by member states rather than the European Commission with national governments keen to protect their sovereignty in the area.

At a meeting in Brussels on Monday (14 May), the bloc's defence chiefs agreed on a strategy for the future development of Europe's defence industry, pledging more mutual cooperation in both research and production.

Nineteen EU member states plus Norway also signed up to a joint investment scheme aimed to pool resources for developing battlefield protection technologies, such as defences against mortar attacks or chemical, biological and radiological weapons.

Defence is a sensitive sector outside the EU's internal market rules, with some critics suggesting the status quo leads to Europe wasting millions of euros a year on duplication and protectionism.

While the commission is currently contemplating possible ways of introducing more competition in the area through common EU legislation, member states also take initiatives at intergovernmental level, through the European Defence Agency (EDA) which stands outside the community institutions.

Under a non-binding "code of conduct" launched by the EDA last year, participating countries have committed to posting tenders for defence contracts on an electronic bulletin board open to companies from across the EU, with tenders worth almost €10 billion currently posted, according to the defence agency.

At the moment, 23 out of 27 of the EU's member states have signed up to the code of conduct, with Spain, Denmark, Romania and Bulgaria remaining outside the system.

Non-binding or binding rules?

The strategy defence ministers agreed on Monday argues that member states must take urgent action to stop a decline in Europe's "defence technological and industrial base" by opening up protected national defence markets.

Echoing the statements by EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana ahead of the meeting, ministers admitted that the current approach with separate national spending on R&D and procurements in member states strictly opened just to national producers is "no longer economically sustainable."

They singled out the US as a key competitor against which Europe has been performing poorly, suggesting they should work more efficiently and cooperate more in order to improve standards.

"We recognise that the problem of accessing the US defence market and of establishing balanced technology exchange across the Atlantic, make it natural and necessary for Europeans to cooperate more closely," writes the agreed document.

The European Parliament's security and defence subcommittee expressed similar feelings in a special report on the issue published last year, arguing that although EU governments spend €250 billion on defence which is half the amount Americans do, their defence capacities are only about 10 percent as efficient as the US.

The study pointed out that there are 23 parallel programmes for armoured vehicles, three new parallel programmes for combat aircraft and 89 European weapons programmes while the US, by contrast, has 27 programmes.

But while the defence ministers acknowledge the same problems as the EU's executive and parliamentarians in their new strategy, they remain reluctant to give any extra powers to Brussels in this area.