A drive to build Europe's weapons together is entering a decisive phase, as the European Commission moves to turn its rearmament pledges into concrete joint defence projects that member states would develop and fund side by side. The plan marks a shift from writing cheques to actually building shared military capabilities.
At its heart sit five proposed European Defence Projects of Common Interest, covering drones and counter-drone systems, maritime and seabed defence, space, air and missile defence, and a reinforced watch along the bloc’s eastern flank. Together they carry a funding ambition that officials put at roughly €190 billion by 2036.
The logic is uncomfortable but simple. Fragmented national armies buy too many incompatible systems in batches too small to be efficient, leaving Europe paying more for less. Pooling demand through joint defence projects promises bigger orders, lower unit costs and equipment that can actually work across borders in a crisis.
Drones sit at the front of the queue. The war in Ukraine has shown how cheap, mass-produced systems can blunt far more expensive forces, and how quickly a modern military burns through them. A shared drone and counter-drone effort aims to close a gap that national programmes have been too slow to fill.
Money is finally following the rhetoric. The European Defence Industry Programme channels €1.5 billion into cooperative procurement and production between 2026 and 2027, while separate loan schemes have mobilised tens of billions more for member states willing to buy jointly.
Yet the obstacles are political as much as industrial. Governments guard their national champions fiercely, and every joint project raises hard questions about which countries build what, whose factories get the work, and how much non-EU industry can take part. Those fights have sunk cooperative programmes before.
France and Germany, the bloc’s largest producers, have a mixed record of shared ventures, with flagship fighter and tank projects repeatedly bogged down by disputes over workshare and control. Smaller states, meanwhile, worry that buy-European rules could lock them out of cheaper or faster options from allies abroad.
The eastern flank adds urgency. Front-line states bordering Russia and Belarus want capabilities now, not in a decade, and they have pushed hard for projects that translate quickly into deployed hardware. For them, joint defence is less an industrial policy than an existential one.
Brussels frames the effort as the missing piece of a credible European deterrent, arguing the bloc can no longer assume American protection is guaranteed. Building capabilities jointly, officials say, is the only affordable way to rearm at the scale the new security environment demands.
Sceptics counter that grand plans have a habit of dissolving into national carve-ups once the funding is divided. The €190 billion figure stretches to 2036, and history suggests plenty of it could evaporate in delays, cost overruns and political horse-trading long before the hardware arrives.
The coming months will show which side is right. If the first joint defence projects move from slideware to signed contracts, Europe will have taken a real step toward standing on its own. If they stall, the continent’s rearmament risks becoming another expensive lesson in how hard it is to defend twenty-seven countries as one.
