Art or science? How EDA nudges Member States closer to joint military projects

It was Paris, the year: 2016. The defence ministers of France, Germany, Italy and Spain had gathered for a meeting in the format of the ‘E4’, the four most powerful EU countries, joined by the EU’s top diplomat. Was it striking that, in a military world, they were all women? That was certainly on the mind of Italy’s then Minister of Defence Roberta Pinotti – and one of the few men in the room, then Italian defence adviser Stefano Cont. “Today, don’t say a single word, OK?” Pinotti turned, and smiling, whispered to Cont, he recalls.

What made the E4 meeting significant was not just the shattering of the ‘glass ceiling’ for women at the top political level in defence, but also that it laid the basis for a far-reaching assessment process of Member States’ defence planning cycles and capability development.

“That moment in Paris marked a new chapter in Europe’s defence cooperation, which was one of great aspirations and, I will admit, some frustration,” says Cont, sitting in his office at EDA, where his military general’s jacket hangs on a stand in the corner. Cont says that the rationale for an EU defence review at the political level was simple: that the European Union needed to stop to reflect after steady progress since 2013. Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 brought a sharpened focus on the EU’s combined defence capabilities, which were in a weakened state after years of defence spending cuts, according to the early CARD reports.

“It was then German Minister of Defence Ursula von der Leyen, now European Commission President, who was asking for a structured EU MoD (Ministry of Defence) annual review on defence,” Cont says. Agreement was unanimous among Italy’s Pinotti, Spain’s then Minister of Defence Maria Dolores de Cospedal, French Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly and EU High Representative Federica Mogherini, who was also head of EDA.

Double or nothing 

Formally approved in May 2017, EDA concluded a test cycle in late 2018 before kicking off the first full CARD cycle in September 2019, over a period of 10 months. While envisaged as a yearly review, the workload proved best suited to a two-year cyclical approach. For better or worse, the name Coordinated Annual Review on Defence stuck.

CARD took its place in the constellation of EU defence cooperation tools: the EU priorities for capability development, the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) to plan, develop and invest in shared capability projects – another result of the E4 meetings – and the European Defence Fund (EDF).

From the outset, the goal of CARD was straightforward: identify where European defence interests overlap and foster cooperation. Collaborative opportunities are also crucial. Without them, CARD risks becoming little more than a well-intentioned exercise without measurable impact.

But the initiative’s early cycles taught EDA’s officials hard lessons. EDA project officers recall the futility of trying to push fully formed ideas onto Member States. “We went with a list of pre-selected ideal projects and it didn’t work,” Cont says. EDA had to recalibrate, moving from asking for governments’ agreement to suggesting possibilities – soft pitches instead of firm proposals.

EDA: No Ace of Spades 

Perhaps the most significant lesson from the CARD initiative has been that cooperation is as much an art as a science. For all the data-crunching, assessment, and diplomatic caution, success lies in building a shared understanding of what each country brings to the table. EDA cannot seek radical shifts in national priorities. Instead, the Agency presents a new perspective on familiar interests, nudging countries to see shared goals through a lens that would work for each of them individually.

Such efforts must constantly balance between a strategic vision and the finer points of politics. The insights drawn from this complex evaluation have been instrumental. It has allowed EDA to go to individual Member States not just with pre-selected project ideas – often a doomed approach – but with targeted, well-researched recommendations that anticipate a country’s own self-interests.

Much of EDA’s work with CARD has hinged on deep, interpretive reading of national policy. A patchwork of national defence documents, NATO assessments, and PESCO goals have provided the raw material. Member States might also have multi-year plans, each a 400-page document, written for parliament. “If you know how to read them, it becomes a map to that country’s ambitions,” Cont says.

EDA has learned that the challenge is not to obtain a ‘yes’ from everyone immediately; it is to keep doors open long enough for collaboration to feel inevitable. And while NATO had its own method of assigning targets to its members, the EU’s defence cooperation remains a different creature. “NATO works in a totally different way,” Cont notes. “They set up their requirements, divide them, and assign targets to countries. We in the EU work from the bottom up, what defence ministries want to do.”

Of course, the EU lacks NATO’s top-down authority and must rely on consensus-building. For EU defence collaboration to work, it has to be attractive rather than mandated, offering Member States a voluntary stake in collective security. “It’s less about imposing what countries should do and more about showing them what’s possible if they work together,” Cont says.

A full house  

Cont is also clear about what constitutes really working together. “If you’re thinking about collaboration in the short term,” he says, “you can just reduce it to joint procurement – buying the same product together.” But real cooperation, he argues, is more like building a house together, requiring joint planning, aligned objectives, and a shared sense of purpose that persists over time.

That is clear in the need for a cohesive missile defence architecture in Europe. If realised, EDA would not merely support Member States’ one-off projects, but could “achieve a structure capable of addressing bigger problems, to foster projects of real significance,” Cont says.

Achieving this European vision, however, will require joint planning, a coordination of both timing and financial commitment among Member States.

And this is where cooperation often stalls. Countries operate on different timetables and financial constraints. The new CFM mechanism could help. (See EDM page 29).

As Cont puts it: “It’s like a group of friends planning a trip – if one wants to travel in August and the other in February, it’s not going to work.” Continuity between governments and policies is also critical for any coherent strategy. “For defence capabilities, there can’t be gaps. You can’t have an air force that stops functioning for five years and then trying to buy it new aircraft,” Cont says.

Ultimately, cooperation could help European Union defence better reflect the bloc’s economic weight. “The EU’s defence budget is one-third of the United States, but do we have one-third of American capabilities? If the answer is yes, then EDA can close tomorrow because we will have reached our goal.”

For the full CARD report, please go to: eda.europa.eu/what-we-do/EU-defence-initiatives

The EU’s defence review 2024 finds that:

• Defence spending is rising, projected to have increased by more than 30% in 2024, but that this alone will not be enough to prepare the EU for high-intensity warfare.

•  EU countries need to simultaneously address short-term operational needs and long-term strategic priorities by investing in technology while ensuring sufficient production of reliable systems for sustained, high-intensity operations while maintaining long-term planning.

• EU countries will need to prioritise investment in land, air, and maritime capabilities for high-intensity warfare. Key areas include replenishing stockpiles, modernising defence systems, and enhancing cybersecurity, interoperability, and strategic enablers like satellite communication.

• The EU needs to collaborate in defence procurement and research to bolster the European Defence Technological and Industrial Base (EDTIB), not always purchasing abroad.

• Ministries of Defence will need to better align their national defence plans with EU and NATO priorities, and use EU frameworks such as PESCO and the collaborative opportunities. This would enhance efficiency, foster innovation, and ensure the EU’s strategic readiness for crises.