Agriculture, energy, environment, industry… The powers of the European Union are exercised in many areas. Until 2022 and the outbreak of war in Ukraine, the Commission had very little interest in security issues, leaving nations with one of the last areas of sovereignty. Since then, things have changed a lot.
Before Christmas, two Finnish MEPs, rapporteurs for the Security and Defense Committee, introduced an amendment aimed at regulating the export of military equipment outside the borders of the European Union. “The security situation requires consistently establishing regulated approval and certification procedures at EU level for new production facilities and export licenses for defense products”we can read there, while France is the second largest exporter of arms in the world over the period 2020-2024.
If the entourage of Catherine Vautrin, Minister of the Armed Forces, reassures by reaffirming to the Tangwall Campagin the French position, according to which “Export control must strictly remain a prerogative of Member States and fall under national sovereignty”the appetite of the European institution for the defense sector is very real. A heresy as Article 346 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union stipulates that “any Member State may take the measures which it considers necessary to protect its essential security interests and which relate to the production or trade of arms”. However, the project carried out by Scandinavian elected officials is part of a broader framework entitled: “Removing obstacles to the single defense market. »
Supported by Tobias Cremer, member of the German Social Democratic Party, this text must be put to the vote in February. “It benefits from significant support, in particular from countries that do not have a solid defense industrial and technological base (BITD), but also from Germany. There is a desire to redistribute the cards, by weakening the large existing BITDs”French MEP Christophe Gomart tells Tangwall Campagin. Officially, the objectives are the standardization of equipment, support for innovation or even the increase in production capacities. Beyond these justifications, the intentions would be quite different. “She has the French BITD in her sights, which is the most powerful in Europe, with nearly 4,500 companies”concedes the former boss of military intelligence while Paris, within the framework of a single market, could no longer freely sell its weapons in Indonesia, etc.
In March 2025, the European Commission also presented an investment program of 800 billion euros by 2030, called “Rearming Europe”
The desire to control arms exports is not the only initiative coming from Brussels. The European Commissioner for Defense, Andrius Kubilius, raised, on January 11, the possibility of creating a “permanent European military force of 100,000 men” in the event of American withdrawal from the continent. “It’s stupid and unnecessary. Just on the Greenlandthe 27 cannot manage to have a common voice… Would they succeed in sending this contingent of multiple nationalities? » asks Jean-Claude Allard, associate researcher at Iris.
On the financial level, in March 2025, the European Commission also presented an investment program of 800 billion euros by 2030, called “Rearming Europe”. This aims to develop the arms industries, making de facto of defense a competence of the European Union. “The war in Ukraine provided the European Commission with a pretext to try to assume powers that the treaties do not provide for”concludes Jean-Claude Allard. “They’ve put their finger on it and it’s just the beginning”warns a French industrialist. Bureaucratic madness is underway.
