Verbatim report of proceedings

Tuesday, 11 March 2025 - Strasbourg

White paper on the future of European defence (debate)

  Andrius Kubilius, Member of the Commission. – Madam President, honourable Members, thank you, first of all, for putting this debate and the morning debate on the future of European defence on the agenda.

In my view, those are the most important debates in the history of this House, because the days we are living through are days which will define the history of Europe and of the European Union.

This is a once-in-a-generation moment: we face a clear and present danger seen by none of us in our lifetimes. More than ever, Europe must prepare for the worst to prevent the worst: the possibility of military aggression against us. Such preparation is the only way to deter the worst. Russia's war industry is operating at full blast. Russia could be ready for a confrontation with NATO in five years or less. American actions are a wake-up call: their policy shift and pivot towards Asia.

Geopolitical reality is changing before our eyes. More than ever, we must stand on our two feet, take charge of our own defence and of deterrence. More than ever, we must support and defend Ukraine. Yes, there must be a peace, but a strong peace. Peace through real strength. A peace with Ukraine and Europe at the table. A just peace, not just a pause for Russia to lick its wounds and start a new, bigger war.

A strong peace also means a strong Europe, able to deter aggression and prevent war. To do that, we must completely overhaul our defence industry, because the gaps are colossal between the defences we have and the defences we need to protect our people. Already now there is a lack of thousands of tanks, fighting vehicles, armoured vehicles, pieces of artillery, as we can guess from publications about NATO's capability targets – a shortfall of EUR 500 billion at least. Even more hundreds of billions are needed for real air defence, space defence, military mobility. Member States need to invest massively to fill these gaps and the EU will support Member States with European Union added value, European scale, European coordination, European money and European laws.

This Commission put defence on the top of the European agenda since before our mandate even started. Defence was top priority in President von der Leyen's political guidelines, and she appointed me as the first-ever European Union Defence Commissioner. She charged me in my mission letter with High Representative Kaja Kallas to present a white paper on the future of European defence, and since the very first day of my mandate, we have been working non-stop in the college, with my services, in plenty of seminars, conferences and discussions, including in this House. I have met many ministers, Members of Parliament, CEOs of defence and space industry. We received many contributions and your very valuable resolution. This month of discussions helped prepare the ground, allowing us to present key proposals already last week with the historical decisions on ReArmEU, far ahead of the white paper's publication. Because if history is running, we cannot be walking.

Last week, President von der Leyen presented the ReArmEU plan, unanimously approved two days later by a historic European Council, with key proposals to supercharge our defence spending up to EUR 800 billion, such as activating the national escape clause of the Stability and Growth Pact and the European Union instrument to support Member States with loans, redirecting existing European funding for defence like cohesion funds, encouraging investment by private banks and the European Investment Bank.

We welcome the leaders' call to reconsider excluded activities to increase funding into defence, and we encourage Member States to continue support for Ukraine by buying arms in Ukraine, with Ukraine and for Ukraine, like Denmark and Czechia are already doing. All initiatives that ensure Ukraine can stay strong and defend itself need to be supported. We will present four legal proposals on ReArmEU before the next European Council.

It is not enough to spend more: spending more in a fragmented market will only fragment it more. Spending more can also mean spending more outside the European Union. This will only increase our dependence. We need to spend better, spend together and spend European, as well as work together on research and development, build more bridges between civil and military research and innovation. Artificial intelligence and quantum technology will change the nature of war, so we must leverage deep tech to level up defence readiness. We must work on priority areas for action at EU level in the field of capabilities like air and missile defence, strategic enablers – including in relation to space – and military mobility.

This is where European Union programmes for joint procurement and joint development programmes like EDIP are crucial. With these programmes, we can incentivise Member States to spend together, to overcome fragmentation, to spend smart and to spend the European. This is how we will build up our own European defence industry, because the defence industry is no ordinary industry, but a resource for our defence. We are encouraging joint procurement to give our European industry the big orders it needs, to simplify production, to reduce the price of armaments and reduce fragmentation. We will simplify our laws and rules to remove all obstacles that stand in the way of ramping up our defence industry. All that is what the white paper is about, and now we need to scale up and speed up. I know this House strongly supports European defence, as President Metsola made clear, as many of you made clear to me during last week when I spoke with the ITRE Committee.

This is why I call on you urgently to agree the Parliament's negotiating position on EDIP, the European defence industry programme, which will allow us to be much more effective in bringing European Union added value to help Member States spend their national defence money in the most useful way. I welcome the Council's call to conclude negotiations as soon as possible. EDIP was proposed a year ago. History will not wait for us. Putin will not wait for us. Next week we will present the white paper to rethink European defence in this strategic moment.

Let me close with some inspiration from history. I recently read the memoirs of Jean Monnet. Jean Monnet was a founding father of the European Union, our great project of peace. But did you know that Jean Monnet was also a father of victory in the Second World War? Jean Monnet helped Churchill and Roosevelt prepare the so-called 'victory programme' to ramp up military production in the United States to defeat the Nazis. He would have recognised many of our current challenges.

Jean Monnet also said 'people only make great decisions when crisis is on their doorstep.' This is the greatest security crisis of our lifetimes, and we must now take the great decisions. All of Europe is a target of Russian aggression. We are all frontline Member States. The white paper is the basis for our industrial victory programme. Victory in defence of peace on the European continent. The white paper and ReArmEU are just the beginning of our road: the road to the victory of peace and democracy in Europe, and we shall prevail.