Brussels: European Union countries are buying too much of their defence equipment abroad, almost two thirds of it in the US, and failing to invest enough in joint military projects, a landmark report on EU competitiveness warned on Monday.
The 27 member states are also failing to make best use of Europe’s research and development capacities to modernise their armed forces, with just a fraction the level of US investment, said the report by former Italian prime minister and European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi.
The report comes as the EU continue to struggle to find enough weapons and ammunition to help Ukraine survive the full-scale Russian invasion, now in its third year, and to kickstart Europe’s defence industry.
“Europe is wasting its common resources. We have large collective spending power, but we dilute it across multiple different national and EU instruments,” said Draghi’s report, which has been a year in the making and is likely to fuel an overhaul of the bloc’s industrial strategy.
Part of the problem, it said, is failing to invest properly in Europe to create stronger defence firms.
“We are still not joining forces in the defence industry to help our companies to integrate and reach
scale,” it said. The report pointed out that “we also do not favour competitive European defence companies”.
The report notes that, between mid-2022 and mid-2023, 63 per cent of all EU defence orders were placed with US companies, and a further 15 per cent with other non-EU suppliers.