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Analyses of RearmEurope and NATO’s European defence

Presentations by Bernard Dréano, Claude Serfati and Catherine Samary

Source: ENSU-RESU meeting of Thursday May 22, 2025

Contents:

1. Presentation of the meeting - Catherine Samary
2. Analysis of RearmEurope - Claude Serfati
3. “European collective security”: on “European defence” and NATO - Bernard Dréano
4. Open conclusion - Catherine Samary

I. Presentation of the meeting – Catherine Samary

All three of us are members of the European Network for Solidarity with Ukraine—Reseau Européen de Solidarité avec l’Ukraine (ENSU-RESU), but we are also members of the Copernicus Foundation, which has partly triggered our reflection here: we are involved in the preparation, with other comrades, of a Copernicus publication discussing European “security” from an “alter-globalist” [“Another World in Possible”] point of view. We would like to present this ongoing reflection within ENSU, knowing that there is no ENSU “consensus” on these major issues (characterisation of the European Union (EU) and NATO and their contradictions/crises, particularly in the context opened by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Trump’s arrival in power). We also know that beyond the ENSU, deep disagreements divide the alter-globalisation left, which have a great need for but lack of debates on the issues raised here.

Obviously, we are not setting ourselves up as the bearers of “indisputable truth”, nor of a uniform, shared and finalised vision. For us, these presentations and this debate are a “stage” in a “process” of necessary analysis and discussion, with legitimate disagreements and questioning, beyond what is our consensual platform (in defence of the Ukrainian people’s right to armed and unarmed resistance to Russian imperial aggression), and our links from below with the Ukrainian left fighting on several fronts.

The discussion will be introduced by two presentations. The first will be by Claude Serfati, analysing RearmEurope. Claude, a member of the ENSU, is a researcher specialising in the “militarisation of the world”, on which he has written numerous books and articles (notably presented or published in the Attac Scientific Council’s review Les Possibles). After him, Bernard Dréano will question the issues of “collective European defence” associated with NATO. Bernard, who is also a member of ENSU, is a long-standing leader and president of a number of international anti-colonialist networks, including the Centre for Studies and Initiatives in International Solidarity (CEDETIM).

Note 1: A third contribution was planned for this meeting, from Adam Novak, who has also been involved in ENSU since its inception (particularly in relation to Eastern Europe), concerning the European Stop RearmEurope meeting which he attended and on which he published a report in Europe Solidaires Sans Frontières. However, Adam apologised for being unable to attend on May 22.  Given the overall lack of time, the importance of critical discussion of ongoing peace mobilisations, and Adam’s absence, this point was not dealt with, leaving it for ongoing ENSU debate.

Note 2: The discussion therefore focused on the two introductions, but with no time to allow Claude and Bernard to intervene in conclusion and dialogue with the questions raised. The two speakers therefore wrote down their presentations, incorporating here what they would have liked to say at the end of the meeting in the light of the discussion. This is why these are “updated” presentations.

Note 3: The discussion with the ENSU coordination group after the meeting emphasised that, as the automatic recording of the presentations and the debate was unusable, the pooling and updating of the debates from this meeting would be done:

a)  By a summary of the meeting by Bernard, Claude and Catherine, including the introductions: hence this text

b) By a summary of the discussion (by interim ENSU-RESU coordinator Szymon Martys) and/or, for those who wish, by the writing-up of their intervention, with publication on the ENSU-RESU web site. But we all agree that ENSU’s priorities are on concrete campaigns, as some interventions stressed during the discussion.

II. Updated presentation on ‘Rearm Europe’

By Claude Serfati (member of ENSU, author of Un monde en guerres, Textuel, April 2024)

Defence is the founding core of states, and even more so on the continent that founded nation states.

To understand where the acceleration of European militarism is leading requires a brief review of my analysis of the EU as a sui generis composite institution.

It is the product of three sometimes converging, sometimes conflicting forces:

• the dynamic of internationalisation of capital based in EU countries but partly integrated within the transatlantic zone
• the central role of the major European states
• the creation of a parastatal bureaucracy (European Commission, European Central Bank, Court of Justice of the European Union) which, like any bureaucracy, has developed its own self-expanding mechanisms based (for the Commission) on a triple role: “levelling the playing fiel” ’between rival national capitals, defending the interests of the EU against rival countries, and above all, coordinating anti-labour policies.

When you look at these complementary but also rival forces, it is easy to understand that the EU is in permanent “crisis”, but the forces of integration that have been in place for seven decades are maintaining common interests without moving towards federalism. So common defence is clearly not on the agenda.

The objectives of the Rearm Europe plan

Militarisation began before 2022

It is a mistake to think that militarisation is only a response to Russia’s imperialist aggression. Between 2014 and 2024, military spending increased by 79% in constant euros, according to European Defence Agency (EDA) data. The forces endogenous to the EU that are pushing for its militarisation are powerful.

The number of employees in the European aerospace and defence industry (including the UK) has risen from less than 800,000 in 2012 to more than one million in 2023. Turnover has risen from €200 billion to €290 billion over the same period, with defence accounting for more than half of this (EDA 2024).

In addition, several member countries account for a significant proportion of global military spending and arms exports.

Rearm Europe: Three key areas

The Rearm Europe (Readiness for 2030) plan announced by the Commission in April provides for defence budgets to be funded to the tune of 800 billion euros, around 4% of EU Gross Domestic Product ($19.4 trillion for 2024). It contains three main measures:

a) A new financial instrument (Security Action for Europe—SAFE) inspired by the one created in 2020 to deal with the arrival of COVID-19. It provides for loans totalling 150 billion euros, i.e. 20% of the total, on preferential terms to enable states to strengthen their military capabilities and collaborate on armaments programs in missile defence systems, artillery, drones, etc. Member States must undertake to purchase weapons systems in which at least 65% of the components come from Europe, including Ukraine.

b) The Commission is encouraging Member States to increase public funding for defence by lifting the 3% national budget deficit limit clause. This estimate assumes that Member States will increase their military spending by an amount equivalent to 1.5% of their GDP (e.g. for France, going from 2% to 3.5% of GDP).

c) The Commission recommends that the European Investment Bank (EIB) considerably relax the conditions for loans to arms companies, which in practice means ceasing to classify arms as harmful products. Banks will now be able to lend to “gun merchants” and at the same time invoke “sustainable development”. The EIB has extended its financial support for security and dual-use goods to eight billion euros for 2021-2027.

Summary of criticisms of the Rearm Europe plan

1. Sharp increase in military spending
2. To be financed by nation states
3. Will only moderately limit national fragmentation
4. Is already considerably enriching the major prime contractor groups and giving rise to AI-based weapons start-ups (Helsing, Mistral) with a surge in venture capital, and
5. Will strengthen rather than diminish the presence of US defence groups

In short, the Commission is not directing its proposals in the direction of massive aid to Ukraine.

Some of these points are developed below.

National fragmentation persists

The Draghi, Letta and Niinistö reports stress the urgent need for industrial integration of arms production, and other reports call for further progress in defining an EU defence and security policy. Numerous reports commissioned by the Commission (and Parliament) put a figure in the tens of billions of euros on “the cost of not having European Defence”, and so on.

But Rearm Europe has none of that. There is:

1. No joint definition of needs
2. No obligation to place joint inter-governmental orders: “These appropriations can support joint procurement of defence products, including industrial capabilities and infrastructure preparation” (Commission, my italics). The Commission simply says: “can”

The Commission points out that: “Member States will always retain responsibility for their own troops, from doctrine to deployment, as well as for defining their armed forces requirements” . This observation, which is also in line with the small share of EU funding (150 billion euros financed by the Commission out of 800 billion euros), sets the course for militarisation: it is up to the Member States to step up their militarisation.

Similarly, “This new instrument (SAFE) provides loans to Member States to strengthen Europe’s defence industry. The purpose of these loans is not to implement a common foreign and security policy”.

National strategies dominate and polarisation around the major European countries will increase

Each major Member State pursues its own agenda. Here are a few examples:

• Germany: “The German government will provide the Bundeswehr with all the resources it needs to become the most powerful conventional army in Europe” (Chancellor Friedrich Merz, May 14, 2025).
• Germany and England: On October 2024, the Defence Ministers of Germany and the United Kingdom signed the Trinity House Agreement .
• France and Poland signed a strategic agreement on May 9, 2025, the limitations of which have already been highlighted by commentators.

The approach is therefore to pursue an “à la carte” defence policy, as provided for in the European Treaty with Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) “for those countries that want to move forward” (that is, the “Coalition of the Willing”).

Competition in arms production continues

According to the EDA, European cooperative programs account for only a small proportion of weapons production (the objective is to reach 40% by 2030) and very little of Research and Technology (6%).

There are competing bilateral European programs in the “aircraft of the future” (France-Germany-Spain vs. UK-Italy-Japan) and disagreements between France and Germany over industrial sharing and export rules.

War dividends

The  tangible result is stock market euphoria. Over the last five years, the stock market index made up of the ten major European aerospace and defence companies (Airbus, three British, two French, two German, one Italian and one Swedish) has risen by 281%, compared with “only” 66% for all the major groups listed in Europe (source: Stoxx).

The venture capital market, which finances start-ups, is also very buoyant. Defence start-ups, particularly German ones, are attracting financial investors, who are mainly American (63% of funding).

The demand for social control of arms companies is a demand that can be heard: arms are not a commodity, wars must not be a business. “I don’t want to take the risk that taxpayers’ money will end up being used to subsidise corporate profits”, said Tobias Cremer, a German Member of the European Parliament with the Socialists and Democrats and on the Parliament’s Defence and Foreign Affairs Subcommittee.

It’s time to take action

The transatlantic factor and the decisive role of the United Kingdom

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said: “The new defence partnership with the United Kingdom will boost cooperation, covering the areas of industry, mobility, peacekeeping, crisis management, as well as defence against hybrid threats   [....] and this is only the first step towards the United Kingdom’s participation in the defence investment program [SAFE]”. British industry could therefore be eligible for EU projects.

Militarisation is proceeding under US domination. This is true from the point of view of the interoperability of weapons systems (see Bernard Dréano’s text), and it is true from the industrial point of view. A dominant share of arms imports comes from the United States.

Against the backdrop of tensions with Trump, the EU-UK agreement takes on all its importance.

Given its historic position, the UK plays a pivotal role in maintaining the transatlantic alliance. This will lead to a shift in the centre of gravity of the EU’s defence policy, which will have to involve the UK, and above all herald new tensions between Member States, with the most pro-US seeking to strengthen the UK’s place in Rearm Europe and cooperative defence programs (hence debates on eligibility criteria, the level of European content—that is, EU content—to benefit from European funds, etc.).

The Rearm Europe plan is not designed to help Ukraine

Some arguments:

1. The refusal to strengthen industrial cooperation to produce for Ukraine means that this aid is simply a juxtaposition of national productions. Result: loss of effectiveness. See the Act in Support of Ammunition Production. For example, the target launched in June 2023 of delivering one million shells to Ukraine (by March 2024) was only achieved after a significant delay (in November 2024). The reluctance to renew this program seems quite strong.
2. France and Italy opposed Commissioner Kaja Kallas’ proposal that the €40 billion aid program for Ukraine - including €5 billion for munitions - should be weighted in proportion to the GDP of the Member States. At present, aid to Ukraine is inversely proportional to GDP (large countries help proportionally less than “small countries”, according to the Kiel Institute).
3. Countries are giving priority to continuing their arms sales (to regimes in the Middle East and India for France, Israel for Germany, etc.). France’s arms deliveries to Ukraine represent barely 20% of its total arms exports.
4. In a study on the consequences of Trump’s election, the Kiel Institute estimates that “Europe could replace most of the equipment supplied by the United States” . For Germany, this would mean an increase from €6 billion to at least €9 billion, for the UK from €5 billion to €6.5 billion, for France from €1.5 billion to €6 billion, for Italy from €0.8 billion to €4 billion and for Spain from €0.5 billion to €3 billion. This could be achieved by redirecting some of these countries’ military spending to produce the weapons Ukraine needs. But the Kiev Institute does not make this claim.
5. This aid to Ukraine could be based on the “Danish model”, which in practice consists of direct funding of arms production by the Ukrainian industry itself. Defence Commissioner Kubilius wants European countries to use Rearm Europe’s SAFE mechanism (above) to double aid to Ukraine (80G€ instead of 40G€ ) by “investing in domestic (Ukrainian) production” . The problem is that for the major militarised countries (Germany, France, Italy, UK) this would mean accepting the emergence of a competing arms industry. The Ukrainian industry has just demonstrated its capabilities and creativity (e.g., Operation Spiderweb to destroy Russian bombers and fighter planes). Can Airbus, BAE Systems, Dassault and Leonardo accept the entry of these Ukrainian competitors on the defence “market”?

Conclusions

1. There is an urgent need to take arms production out of the hands of Europe’s large, financialised defence groups
2. We must denounce the Rearm Europe plan, which uses the Russian invasion to fatten military-industrial system
3. No weapons for dictatorships, weapons for Ukraine.

III. European collective security? Questions on European defence and NATO

Presentation by Bernard Dréano, (Centre for Studies and Initiatives in International Solidarity)

A point on method

Points of view may differ between us within RESU-ENSU, depending on our perceptions of the urgencies and threats, the historical experiences and the political situations in each of our countries, concerning what is or could be a defence policy and collective security in Europe. All those who contribute to our Network in support of the armed and unarmed resistance of the Ukrainian people may have different sensitivities and may even differ on certain particular points.

The real NATO

NATO is supposed to be the military tool of the Euro-American Atlantic Alliance, conceived during the Cold War, whose political foundations have never been updated and whose ideological unity is in question. Above all, this alliance is not an alliance of equals but confirms the pre-eminence of the United States of America, including in NATO’s organisational system, while strategic decisions are not taken after consultation of all the allies. NATO is responsible for ensuring that certain decisions are implemented in practice.

In reality, NATO is a functional agency, producing standards and methods. It ensures the interoperability of the member countries’ armies, as well as those of a large number of non-member countries in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. This agency function encourages the supply of US equipment for the armies concerned.

NATO is perceived by the majority of its Member States, and often by their public opinion, as an “insurance policy”, since Article 5 of its Charter stipulates that members stand in solidarity with one another. The guarantee of a “nuclear umbrella” is only implicit and is not included in the contract.

In practice, NATO as such never intervened in armed conflicts during the Cold War (although the “NATO agency” may have played a technical role). The first military intervention under the NATO flag took place in Bosnia-Herzegovina under a UN mandate in 1992, followed by intervention in the Kosovo war without a UN mandate in 1999. The longest, for twenty years (2001-2021) was in Afghanistan, where NATO was then a sub-contracting agency under the domination of the United States (Operation Enduring Freedom). And yet, after the final disaster, the NATO authorities “congratulated themselves” on a campaign whose foundations and modalities were never seriously discussed in the Member States.

Today, in the face of Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, it is not NATO that is taking the decisions, confining itself to its role as the lead agency of the “Ramstein Group” of countries supplying arms to Ukraine.

There is no “European pillar” of NATO and the supreme European command is held by an American. NATO changed the name of its “integrated command” to make it easier for France to rejoin in 2009 (although in reality it had never left), changing it to “operation command” and leaving the French with a “transformation command” that commands nothing. In the same year, 2009, the United States instituted nuclear sharing, formalising the presence of American nuclear weapons in five member countries (Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Turkey), which are very theoretically involved in any decision to use them. The purchase of F-35 Lockheed-Martin aircraft is one of the unwritten clauses in the contract. Finally, the NATO-Russia Council functioned well from 2002 to 2008, and was only abolished in 2014.

The European Union

This question is developed elsewhere. Let’s just remember that the European Community (later Union) was founded explicitly excluding the military-security aspect (implicitly reserved for NATO), but in 1992 a Common Foreign and Security Policy was established, in 2007 a Common Security and Defence Policy adopted, in 2016 “permanent structured cooperation” (PESCO), and finally, in 2025, the Rearm Europe program (renamed Readiness 2030).

Article 42 of the 2007 Lisbon Treaty also provides for solidarity between Member States in the event of aggression against one of them.

What is the basis for common security and defence?

Progressive movements in Europe have generally avoided seriously addressing the issues of common security and defence.

Most (but not all) social democrats have accepted the Atlanticist stance and NATO as a “guarantee”, with a few merely deploring the absence of a European pillar in NATO.

Radical and ecosocialist left forces have on the one hand denounced—with varying degrees of coherence or no coherence at all and very little effectiveness—imperialist military actions involving European armies, and on the other hand generally denounced NATO and the militarisation of the European Union.

All of this has remained very abstract, and not without drifts (e.g., refusal to support the resistance of the Ukrainian people against Russian imperialism for some, refusal or inability to intervene to stop Israel’s genocidal war in Palestine for others...).

We need to tackle defence and security issues with short-term actions and long-term proposals.

By the beginning of the twenty-first century, no one knew on what geostrategic and security policy consensus the Atlantic Alliance was founded. Differences in priorities and programming were obvious, between the United States and certain Europeans, among the European states themselves, and NATO was more than ever reduced to an instrument of policies defined primarily in Washington (for example, in Afghanistan). Putin’s war of aggression had the effect of suddenly “reviving” NATO, with two neutral countries, Sweden and Finland, joining the Alliance and becoming part of the organisation. Donald Trump’s second term in office has seen the contradictions between the Americans and the Europeans deepen to the breaking point, with no clear alternatives yet defined within or outside NATO (coalitions of the willing, new forms of defence community, etc.).Whatever the future of the NATO structure in a system of collective security (reformed or abolished?), we might wonder why, for years, almost no one on the left (in Europe or North America) has asked for or is asking for accounts of the organisation’s activities, in national parliamentary bodies, in the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, or about what is said in the North Atlantic Council?

Before we even know how to defend, and with what military and civilian resources, we must first ask ourselves what we want to defend and whether the political or material resources deployed are consistent with this desire and likely to preserve a lasting peace.

The basics are there:

In the European states (all except Russia and Belarus), the European Convention on Human Rights has the force of law, and all are expected to accept the judgements of the European Court of Human Rights. Very significantly, some right-wing parties and the extreme right in Europe are attacking this institution and the Convention.

At the end of the Cold War, Europeans and North Americans created a specialised organisation to ensure common security, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, but unfortunately its implementation has been hampered by the very people who founded it (not just the Russians). The project still needs to be revitalised.

Most European states subscribe, and not only by definition, to the United Nations Charter, but also to a body of laws and treaties concerning security, international law and in particular humanitarian law and arms control, such as the 2014 UN Arms Trade Treaty or the 2008 European Directive on the same subject.

Such texts are not in contradiction with defence policies, including their strictly military dimensions. They constitute the common basis of what must be defended and must guide the organisation and implementation of defence resources.

IV.  Concluding remarks (‘updated’) from the meeting (Catherine Samary)

A number of positions emerged from the introductions and the debate, from ENSU’s point of view:

a) The need for transparency on the choices and policies pursued in the name of “collective security”

b) A critique of those dominant political forces who combine support for militarism with attacks on social rights and service, both is their discourse and their budget policies

c) A critique as well of the abstract pacifism that does not show solidarity with the Ukrainian resistance to Russian aggression, and even makes the aid given to Ukraine the cause of the war.  For us, as for our Ukrainian comrades, “from Ukraine to Palestine, occupation is a crime”.

So, overall, there is a demand for public, democratic control of production and budgets, with a concrete analysis of conflicts and wars: in each country and on a European scale: what arms production, by whom, for whom, for what purposes? The “politicisation” of the debate on arms and “security” from a perspective of solidarity “from below” with popular resistance to aggression implies the socialisation of the arms industries. The control of choices is itself associated with links from below (political, trade union, feminist, environmental, etc.) with associations resisting neo-colonial policies.

Against the abusive use of the notion of “war economy” (cf. Macron) supporting the profits and exports of the arms industries to reactionary forces: it is possible from a European “alter-globalist” point of view to oppose the militarisation of budgets and minds and to demand concrete aid to  the Ukrainian resistance and its necessary “war economy”  (as the Danes do), according to specified needs. Cf. the conclusions of Claude Serfati’s speech: arms for Ukraine, not for Israel...

In this same logic of controlling and politicising the debate on “what kind of European security” on the basis of rights (cf. Bernard Dréano), it is possible to oppose the pseudo-choice imposed between military “security” (the right to resist aggression with arms in hand) and the defence of social rights. This is the orientation defended by our comrades in Ukraine, fighting on several fronts and stressing that consolidating popular resistance in the face of Russian aggression means strengthening rights and social services, not attacking them as is done on the basis that the neo-liberal logic—from Zelensky to Trump via the European Union—does.