The European Defence Agency (EDA) has just published the National Breakdown of Defence Data for 2009. These are official statistics on the main defence expenditure components for each of the EDA participating Member States (all EU Member States except Denmark):
- Macro-economic data to show how defence budgets relate to GDP, overall government spending and population.
- Major categories of defence budget spending – personnel; investment, including research & technology; operations & maintenance; and others – to show how defence budgets are spent.
- European collaboration for equipment procurement and R&T to show to the extent to which the Agency’s participating Member States are investing together.
- Deployability: military deployed in crisis management operations to show the ratio between deployments and the total number of military.
The figures provided are official figures based on data provided direct by the main spending authorities, the Ministries of Defence.
EDA has been gathering data on its Member States’ defence expenditure since 2005. The exercise of periodically assembling accurate data in the four areas described above aims at providing an annual overview of Member States’ defence expenditure, overall and in specific categories, to show their defence expenditure trends and to measure progress against benchmarks for investment. Accurate data is needed to provide a baseline for setting targets to improve defence output. Defence Data collection and analysis is also supporting EDA activities, in particular relating to R&T (collaboration), Armaments (collaboration) and to capability development, in order to help measure progress in their respective areas of responsibility. Benchmarks allow for specific measuring of progress at the aggregate EU level on spending more (together) for R&T and Equipment Procurement.
The method for the annual data-gathering and analysis is well-established and prepared through a fixed annual cycle. The definitions were agreed by the 26 participating Member States in order to have comparable data across them all. After some adjustments that occurred in the first years of data collection, the definitions are now stable thus allowing not only for a comparison between countries but also for an analysis of the evolution over time.
The Agency is also launching a new Defence Data Portal, with improved graphics as well as more detailed information on the indicators used, on the targets that have been set for investment and on the method used for gathering the data.
We invite you to visit the Defence Data Portal, where you can access the statistics on defence expenditure for each of the 26 EDA participating Member States. By selecting any of the 26 Nations (or the EDA flag) you can access data per Member State or for the EU as a whole for the period 2005 to 2009. Clicking on the links in the right side column “Consolidated Data”, you can access the National Defence Data files (where each page provides a comparison between all the Member States over two consecutive years), aggregated data at the EU level, and a comparison between the EU and the US in terms of defence expenditure. You can also obtain information on the Methodology used, the Benchmarks and the Definitions, through the dedicated pages.
Graham Muir, Head of Policy & Planning Unit / Leonor Pires, Statistics Officer