Europe believes that the United States no longer guarantees its safety and has decided to reward itself greatly. How do you intend to do it? Can costs handle? And what impact will this new scenario have on the European geostrategic position and in the economic and industrial sectors of Europe?
The European Union has pledged to reinforce European defense capabilities. The proposal of the European Commission “Roarmar to Europe” defines as a priority the supply of strategic teams, such as air defense and antimiles, artillery systems, missiles, ammunition and drone systems and anti-Aire. Military expenses would be excluded from strict European budgetary restrictions.
If each Member State spent an average of 1.5 % of its GDP in defense, the total amount would be 650 billion euros. In addition, the Plan foresees 150 billion euros in loans for the acquisition of defense means, mostly manufactured in Europe. Additional defense financing sources are being studied, including private financing mobilization and the EU is also studying the harmonization of joint public requirements and contracts to guarantee a more efficient market, reduce costs, guarantee transition access to supply chains and increase the competitiveness of the defense sector as a whole.
In total, there are around 2500 SME operating in the EU defense sector. We visited one of them on the outskirts of Prague, the capital of the Chéquia. Each year, 60 people produce 70 aerial vehicles unmanned here, Vant, made for civil and military purposes. They are currently being used for surveillance, communication and information operations in conflict areas in Ukraine and Iraq. The latest model has just received an important certification that should help accelerate its implementation in NATO members, says Ladislav Semetkovský, executive director of the company.
“The certification process has been underway for five years, with more than 40 experts working on it,” explains Semetkovský. “In total, they processed more than 28,000 pages of texts and made hundreds of flights.”
It is expected that the company’s billing, which has established an association with the European giant Airbus Defense and Space, amounts to about 40 million euros this year. Managers claim that Vant are manufactured completely in Europe.
“I think companies like ours are extremely important to maintain European security, because the national defense industry can guarantee the stable supply and functioning of any technology, whether military or civil,” says Semetkovský. “That is why cooperation with European manufacturers is crucial for the defense of Europe.”
However, managers claim that this is a cooperation that often leads to frustration, since bureaucracy and excessive regulation limit the signing of contracts that could effectively increase production and create more jobs.
“I think the biggest problem is that politics ignores what a truly innovative industry can do, and the fact that there is, for example, a gap or simply a lack of dialogue between us,” says Jan Sechter, president of the UAV Primo UAV Supervision Council. “And this can be a source of concern for the industry, when it comes to public contracts, for example. We need better and better communication between states, research, development and industry. It is quite common in the United States, in Europe we have to get used to it and encourage it.”
The European Defense sector guarantees around 600,000 jobs and this new scenario could help create even more. But can Europe, overloaded with debt, really endure the requirements of mass rearmament in the current unstable economic situation? In Pilsen, Zdeněk Rod, International Professor of International Security at Western Bohemian University, says that given the new geopolitical context, Europe has few options but progresses.
“If we observe the era of the Cold War, NATO member countries spent approximately four, five or even six percent in defense, so these numbers have been reached before, which means that it is not something unreasonable. Of course, in the current context, it is a bit more complicated because national debts are very high. We can see that more than 50 % of the members of the European union of the fiscal problems of the tax union of the union of the union of this Money, “explains the executive and co -founder village of the Central of the Central of the Security Center of the Center of the Central of the Central of Security.
“We know that Europe is based in a solid way. Therefore, we have to find a balance between the security and social welfare that we want to maintain. One of the options would be, for example, to increase taxes, which, suppose, would not be well accepted in most states. If we do not want to borrow more money or increase taxes, the only option is to make cuts in national budgets,” says Rod.
Europe plans to establish a minimum threshold in which 65 % of the military components for financing must be European.
