EDA’s coordination role in future European capability development will be central. Together with its Member States and EU institutions, it has helped assemble a set of interlocking tools and policies designed to forge coherence across the full spectrum of capability developments that lie ahead, from defence research to pre-procurement testing and prototyping to acquisition support. Without such coherence, Europe’s defence sector will remain fractured into small national markets, with all their associated high costs and duplication of effort.
“The momentum created by these initiatives offers a unique opportunity to overcome this fragmentation,” says EDA Chief Executive Jorge Domecq. “Achieving that will take time, of course, but we now have the tools at our disposal. The test will be how they are used and whether they deliver the expected results.”
EDA is well positioned to oversee how those tools are used. For example, it is the main forum in Brussels for defence experts to exchange ideas and initiatives on defence research and technology, align procurement cycles, pool demand for equipment and services, define programme management goals and other activities critical to generating capabilities. It has long experience in managing defence research projects, for example, and it functions as the military’s voice and interface vis-à-vis EU institutions and policies.
Getting EDA’s Member States to move together toward better and more efficient capabilities sounds straightforward enough, and if it was any sector other than defence that might be true. After all, Europe has binding rules and standards for many of its sectors such as telecommunications or transport.
But defence occupies in its own unique category, with only one purchaser – the government – and the obligation to guarantee the security of all other segments of society. These point directly to matters of security of supply, industrial competences, national military prerogatives and other aspects that account for the traditional divergence and duplication of effort that has characterised Europe’s defence sector as a whole for the past 70 years.
To create higher levels of interoperability between the Member States’ defence capabilities is a major challenge, to put it mildly. But it can be done with enough time and the right kind of effort linked to what is achievable in concrete terms.
The EU’s gameplan for generating these results rests on two pillars: identification of the interoperable capabilities needed, and a set of tools to support their development, leading ultimately to common planning among Member States.
The desired military capabilities arise from the Union’s Level of Ambition and are defined by the EU’s Capability Development Plan (CDP), which was revised by Member States in June 2018 in EDA. The agreed 2018 EU Capability Development Priorities (11), resulting from the revised CDP, address the entire capability spectrum, taking into account the CSDP capability shortfalls, long-term capability and technological trends, Member States’ defence plans, and lessons learned from CSDP missions and operations, and provide a key reference for Member States’ and EU’s capability development.
It falls to the Member States to generate those capabilities, a task easier said than done. Indeed, the EU has framed capability goals for its Member States several times in the past, but to little effect. However, the pressure on Europe for strategic autonomy combined with the new security threats and challenges that now confront its corner of the world demand a far more effective approach to generating European capabilities.
Fortunately, valuable lessons have been absorbed in national and EU policymaking circles about what has, and has not, worked in previous attempts to generate interoperable defence capabilities. There is a new approach to coherence and keeping it on track.