Is There Money for a European Defence Force?

s This article examines European defence expenditure and more specifically the question of whether there is sufficient financial leeway to establish a European defence initiative. In view of the numerous defence threats on Europe’s external borders: Russia, Turkey, growing migration pressures and the ineffectiveness of the external borders of the “Schengen-zone”, this article will examine the following: What are the defence expenditures of the European members of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and of non-NATO members in Europe; Would it be possible to establish a European army with these financial resources? The current figures are primarily based on NATO financial sources (see references). These NATO figures refer to defence spending, including military pensions and militarized police forces such as the “Gendarmerie” in France and the “Koninklijke Marechaussee” in The Netherlands. In conclusion the article tries to respond to the question of which states would be necessary and/or potentially available for the creation of a European defence force? First, this study gives a short overview of the defence history in western Europe after the second world war, followed by the European attempts concerning this item. Finally, this article examines the topic of this article in point three; namely: which European countries are potential partners for an European defence system.


Introduction
The history of the creation of a European army started after the Second World War. The British opposition leader and wartime PM, Winston Churchill (Conservative party), gave a speech about the dangers of the "iron curtain" in Europe in an historical speech at Fulton, Missouri (16 March, 1946).
Almost a year later, France and the United Kingdom signed a 50 year treaty of alliance and mutual assistance at Dunkirk (4 March, 1947).
On 12 March 1947, President Harry Truman (democratic party) addressed Congress, saying that he believed the USA should "support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure". This was the start of the so called "Truman doctrine". Following the Brussels treaty of the beginning of the year the Defence Ministers of Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the UK decided to create the West European Union (27-28 September, 1948). This was the first West European defence organization and had its headquarters in London. The "WEU" was a treaty which required the signatories to help one another in the event of aggression. The WEU was nonetheless insufficient to guarantee the security of Europe.
On 10 December 1948 negotiations were started in Washington DC on the drafting of the NATO agreement between the members of the WEU, Canada and the USA.
In the early months of 1949 the seven negotiating partners invited five other European countries (Denmark, Iceland, Italy, Norway and Portugal) to join the talks (15 March, 1949).
These twelve countries signed the NATO treaty in Washington DC on4 April 1949 and it came into effect on 24 August of the same year. NATO membership has subsequently risen steadily and there are currently 29 member states.
The establishment of NATO and its impact on the security and military protection of Western Europe components would report to their governments. In this way the five would create a structure in which a new West German army would be under the supervision of the EDC. The treaty also provided for centralized military procurement as well as a common budget and institutions.
In reality the EDC plan was more a confederal army and not a truly united European army.
As it turned out the French Parliament (Assemblée Nationale) refused to ratify the EDC, with 319 deputies voting against and only 264 in favour. The "Gaullist" faction in the "Assemblée Nationale" was afraid that the EDC would threaten the national sovereignty of the Fourth Republic and the large communist faction, which had links with Moscow, also voted against.  -promoting more effectively targeted joint defence R&T (Research and Technology); -catalysing defence R&T through studies and projects; -managing defence R&T contracts; -working in liaison with the Commission to maximize complementarity and synergy between defence and civil or security-related research programmes. Both opponents and proponents of a European defence force seem to think that EDA has a key role to play. Nonetheless at present the capabilities and possibilities of this EU institution are very limited indeed.

EU Battle Groups
The European Council (November, 1999) in Helsinki introduced the idea of an EU rapid reaction force.
This idea was reiterated at the French-UK summit at Le Touquet (February, 2003).

Intergovernmental Cooperation
Since the close of the last century there have been numerous instances of intergovernmental military cooperation between EU/European NATO members.
All these cooperative initiatives have arisen outside the legal framework of the EU treaty.
The best known examples in this field are the following:

Current Proposals
The former French and German Ministers of Defence, in the persons of Jean Yves Le Drian (Socialist party) and Ursula Von der Leyen (Christian democrat) respectively, proposed closer EU defence cooperation in the press in 2016 (Suddeutsche Zeitung and Le Figaro, 12 September, 2016).
The two ministers came out in favour of a joint military HQ, shared satellite reconnaissance data, a logistics centre for sharing strategic assets and a joint military academy.
In their article Le Drian and Von der Leyen noted that a core group of EU members could proceed to structured and lasting cooperation without impediment.
This prompted Britain's Defence Minister Michael Fallon to describe the Franco-German idea, "as unnecessarily duplicating what we have already in NATO" (EU Observer, 17 September, 2016).
On 30 November 2016 the EU Commission submitted a "European Defence Action Plan" (EDAP), which proposed a European defence fund and other actions to support EU member states.
There are three main prongs to the action plan: -Launching an EU defence fund, European industries.
In the EDAP communication, the EU Commission proposed that the specific details of the budget and management was to be developed at a later date.
Following the European elections in France in the spring of 2017 the EU Commission proposed a "European Defense Industrial Programme" for supporting the competitiveness and innovative capacity of the EU defence industry. This programme will cover the years 2019 and 2020. The amount set aside for the implementation of the programme during the two year period is 500 million euro.
On the basis of the 2016 communication on the EDAP referred to above, the Commission has a launched a specific plan for a "European Defence Fund". This fund would have two windows, one for research and the other for capability (development and acquisition).
The windows will be coordinated by a coordination board, in which the EU Commission, the European Defence Agency, member states and industry will sit as appropriate.
The research window is to be financed from the EU budget (90 million euro before 2020 and 500 million a year beyond 2020).
The research window will offer grants for innovative defence technologies and products. The capability window will create incentives for member states to cooperate in developing prototypes through co-financing (20% by the EU and 80% members) with the following projected budgets: -Before 2020: 2.5 billion euro (500 million EU and 2 billion from member states' budgets); -Beyond 2020: 5 billion euro (1 billion EU and 4 billion euro from national budgets).
Finally the intention is that member states will acquire these products. The Commission proposed that the EU will only co-fund the development of prototypes when member states commit to buying the finished products.
The EU Commission highlighted the problems and weaknesses of the present European army systems as follows:  All these countries tend to adopt a neutral status.
The outcome of the second world war meant that Austria has been required to be neutral since 1955 although the country already contributes to several EU military missions. The Austrian defence budget has tended to grow in recent years despite being lumped together with the budget for sports. It is likely that Austria will take a more active role in view of Russian diplomatic brinkmanship.
In Cyprus the defence budget is not a priority because of the financial crisis. Malta has never shown much commitment to national defence as the island has traditionally looked to Britain for its protection.
Nonetheless the challenges and dangers emanating from North Africa compel Malta to have a national defence policy. From 2014 to 2015 Malta's defence budget rose from 0.54% to 0.61%.
Sweden has a long tradition of neutrality and a fairly well-equipped army. Sweden too though has squeezed defence spending and as a result the defence budget has fallen to 1.2% of GDP. As a result of the Russian tensions, the Swedish defence budget will increase to nearly 5.6 billion dollars in 2020.
The Swiss confederation also has a long tradition of neutrality. Even so the country delivers troops for peacekeeping operations under EU, NATO and UN command.
With the exception of Switzerland all these countries are members of the European Union. It is not clear to what extent they are prepared to play a more active role in an EU defence policy.
None of them belongs to a properly established defence organization such as NATO, although the six EU member states take part in cooperative EU defence projects.
The likelihood of a positive Swiss response to a joint EU defence must be regarded as slight and it must be assumed that Switzerland will remain neutral and not become a military partner.
Combined the six other states have the following military power: -Troops: 100,000 men, -Budget: 13.95 billion dollars.
There is no disputing that Sweden is militarily the most powerful of this group of neutral EU states.
This can be explained by its neutrality and a policy of strictly national defenceas well as by the existence of a large defence industry (e.g., Bofors, Saab).
All these countries can expect extended political and diplomatic debate if they are to play a more active role within an integrated European defence system, as such cannot be reconciled with a neutral status.
None of the aforementioned states meets the NATO standard of defence spending of 2% of GDP per annum.

The Non EU States
The NATO has several member states which do not have EU membership, namely: Albania,    NATO states comes to only 237 billion US dollars, a great deal less than the US defence budget. What is striking is that the defence budgets in many of these states have been kept to an absolute minimum.
The United Kingdom spends the most on defence (57.8 billion USD), followed by France (48.1) and Germany (46.5). Next on the list is Italy (24.5) even though it spends not much more than half the German budget. Spain (12.6) comes fifth, with a budget not much more than half the Italian one. Spain Here we may recall that we have already mentioned that the US spends 3.58% of GDP on defence.

Potential Contributors
At this stage we would like to investigate which European countries, both EU and non-EU members could potentially contribute to the establishment of a European defence force.
We may first consider the list of states that are both EU and NATO members. Most of these countries are interested in and support the idea of a European army, although the list in itself raises questions about those countries whose policies cast doubt on their effective participation.
Denmark is a member of the European Union and NATO but not of EDA! This forces us to conclude that Denmark will not be a contributor to a European army in the immediate future. The geographical location of this Scandinavian country is nonetheless highly relevant to the defence of Europe. After all Denmark controls access to the Baltic from the North sea and vice versa. Furthermore, Denmark has sovereignty over the Faroe Islands, north of Scotland, and over Greenland. The latter, lying between Canada and Iceland, occupies a strategic position in the North Atlantic, particularly with respect to any future exploitation of the Arctic. Greenland has not been part of the European Union since 1985, but continues to be part of the Kingdom of Denmark and NATO territory.
We should maybe be also considering the position of Hungary and Poland in view of the various disputes and tensions between the current governments of these two states and the European Commission in connection with various aspects of domestic policy. Even so both countries are NATO: -EU-EDA members and their most important security concern is the threat from Russia, which is why we must conclude that their interests lie with a joint defence against the Russian Federation.
The thorniest question of all though is what the United Kingdom is likely to do post Brexit regarding membership of a European army. The UK is a member of NATO and will continue to be so, but leaving The next question that any analyst must ask is whether the non-EU member states can be considered as potential contributors to a European defence force. We have already looked into the budgets and manpower of the various neutral EU states (under 3 above). Of this group of seven states, the Swiss confederation must be ruled out as a potential member of a European army. The strict and historical neutrality of this alpine state excludes Switzerland from the whole concept. It is much harder to give a yes or no answer regarding the six other states. All six are currently joining EDA, but the step towards an active, rather than a neutral, European army may be a bridge too far for all or some of these states.  Turkey has significant military capabilities, but has no ties to the EU. Furthermore, despite long-standing aspirations to join the EU, the country has in recent years been distancing itself from West European values and standards.
The two Balkan states of Albania and Montenegro have little to offer in military terms, apart from encircling Serbia, which is aligned with Russia.
If we are to be realistic we must accept that these two states have little to offer a European defence force.
That leaves us with Norway, with its strategic position regarding the western approaches and the Arctic.
Norway is an EDA partner, but has declined to become an EU member. It is linked to the EU via EFTA and the European Economic Area. The same comment applies to Iceland.
It is far from clear whether a European defence system could be viable without the participation of the Scandinavian countries and in particularly without Norway and Iceland.

Conclusions
In this study, we have tried to determine what the budgetary situation for launching a new EU defence force would look like. Any initiatives in this direction will have to overcome considerable obstacles.
Indeed, as this study clearly shows, it is the United States that currently makes the greatest efforts regarding the European defence. In effect it is the American taxpayer who, since the establishment of NATO in 1949, has paid a not insignificant share of the European defence bill. Even so the idea that the European Union might play a role in the establishment of a European defence system is something new.
The steps towards an EU army have been very slow, and any progress has tended to be a somewhat à la carte affair. In institutional terms it is as yet not at all certain what a European force might look like.
Would it be part of the European Union and be administered by EU institutions or will the armed forces continue to be a national concern subject to EU coordination? Apart from that, the role of the non-EU states in a European defence force is also set to be the subject of much discussion. Finally the question of what the relationship between a European defence force and NATO must also be considered.
In this article we have looked at what the budgetary resources available to an EU defence force might be for various scenarios (Table 6). In this respect the article shows that the EU defence budgets of the member states are simply too small to play a military role of global significance. Comparison with the US defence budget highlights this and it must also be pointed out that just five of the EU states who are NATO members meet NATO's defence-spending standard of 2%. Overall the EU's NATO members come nowhere near the standard and spend on average only 1.45% of GDP on defence. Essentially this means that more government money will have to be made available for EU defence. In view of the straitened state of the treasuries of many countries, this would appear to be a difficult option to implement. There is nonetheless one country that has a significant positive balance on the national budget, namely Germany, with a surplus of roughly 30 billion euros. The key question though is whether Germany would be prepared to spend more money on defence, and whether other EU members would be prepared to allow Germany to play a leading role in Europe's defence? Here our conclusion must be that financing the defence of the EU is going to be the subject of much political debate.
In terms of personnel the combined total for the EU's armed forces bears comparison with that of the United States, but it must be pointed out that these figures include a very large proportion of administrative and logical support structures and that the effective deploy ability of these forces is only very limited.
This article also considers the potential members of a European defence system. As we have seen there are a number of problems with neutral countries, non-EU states, the non-participation in the EDA by Denmark, and the looming Brexit and the position of the United Kingdom. With respect to the latter country, we must acknowledge that the non-participation of the United Kingdom in an European defence force gives rise to major difficulties, partly because of the high level of British defence and partly because of the geo-strategic position of the country.
Generally speaking, the conclusion of this article must be that-at present-not enough money is available for the development of an European defence force. Apart from that there are numerous difficulties of an institutional nature, the relationship with NATO, potential members, etc. In other words a specifically EU defence initiative is not a realistic prospect either in the short term or the medium term. The defence of Europe and the Atlantic must continue to remain in the hands of NATO!