Playing it SAFE? New EU spending plan leaves US out in the cold

Kaja Kallas, Vice President of the European Commission addresses media at the unveiling of the White Paper for European Defence (European Commission)

BELFAST — The European Union has excluded the US from accessing a new €150 billion ($163 billion) Security Action for Europe (SAFE) funding package proposal as it charts a path toward greater strategic autonomy, rearmament at pace and less reliance on Washington for weapons.

The SAFE initiative sits within the wider Readiness 2030 program announced by the European Commission today. It involves raising the new funding through “capital markets” and then redistributing it to member states through loans based on demand and national equipment plans, according to a Commission statement.

“SAFE will allow Member States to immediately and massively scale up their defence investments through common procurement from the European defence industry, focusing on priority capabilities,” it adds. “This will contribute to ensuring interoperability, predictability, and reducing costs for a strong European defence industrial base.”

Joint SAFE procurements require involvement from at least two countries, one of whom must be a EU member.

Eligibility is extended beyond EU members to Ukraine, European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries — comprising of Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland — and European Economic Area (EEA) nations. Alongside the US, the UK has been excluded from participation.

“What we see … with Ukraine, if they use weapons that are not produced in Ukraine and sometimes there are limitations on how you can use those weapons … in terms of crisis, your military needs to really have free hands,” said Vice President of the European Commission Kaja Kallas at a press conference in Brussels, hinting at unease over the utility of foreign weapon systems at a time when some European capitals are raising questions about the operational independence of high profile US aircraft like Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fifth-generation fighter jet.

SAFE funding makes up a sizeable portion of the wider €800 billion ReArm Europe package, the rest of which the EU plans on delivering over four years through a national defense escape clause that exempts deficit calculations for member states’ individual defense budgets, up to a maximum of 1.5 percent GDP.

Under the weight of Russian aggression and US pressure, the EU also delivered a new defense white paper today [PDF] focused on how to close capability gaps, make its industrial base stronger, build up support for Ukraine and “urgently ramp up” readiness by the end of the decade.

The pace of “traditional allies and partners,” including the US, pivoting away from Europe is “happening faster than many had anticipated,” warns the paper. The paper’s release comes amid President Donald Trump’s pro-Russia signaling, along with his calling on the continent to take greater ownership of its security, recently pausing US military aid and intelligence sharing for Ukraine, threatening to annex Greenland, and expressing his dislike of NATO.

Air and missile defense systems, ammunition, counter unmanned aerial systems (C-UAS), drones, and electronic warfare equipment are among conventional capability gaps that the white paper targets, alongside emerging technologies like AI and quantum computing. The gaps also include “strategic enablers” such as air-to-air refueling and airlift aircraft.

“Capability gaps can be closed through the acquisition of capabilities for high-intensity warfare in line with EU and NATO capability processes,” outlines the strategy document. “The scale, cost and complexity of most projects in these areas go beyond” the capacity of individual member states. “Thus, coordinated action benefiting from support of the whole EU toolbox would facilitate cost-effective procurement and prompt the ramp-up of European defence industrial capacity, strengthening our technological base including defence technology innovation.”

Despite the clear-eyed focus on how to resolve capability shortages, the white paper does not spell out which joint flagship projects will go ahead. Industry has repeatedly called for the EU to roll out such programs and put sizeable funding toward them in order to dramatically strengthen military manufacturing across the continent.

Instead, the document proposes a “set of Defence Projects of Common European Interest,” the type of which will be decided by member states at a later date.

Andrius Kubilius, European Commissioner for Defence and Space told reporters that the European Council has a “goal” to present common defense project “options” to member states around June, though he did not indicate which options are under consideration.

The white paper also counts on collaborative programs to drive “economies of scale” and accelerate  equipment delivery times.

“In turn, this will boost the production capacity of [the] European defence industry,” it adds.

“By creating the necessary conditions to massively frontload investment in [the] defence sector, providing necessary predictability to industry and reducing red-tape, the EU will support Member States to achieve
full readiness in 2030.”

Kubilius also said he “didn’t want to get stuck on numbers” over exact defense spending targets for EU members as a GDP percentage figure, though he suggested that above 2 percent GDP is in line with a “new level of ambition.”