A service of the

AdobeStock|136106782

Forum · Issue 4 · 2024
Ensuring European Security and Stability

AdobeStock|#516608718


From Unemployment Struggles to Labour Market Shortages?

Adobe Stock|#268182611

Forum · Issue 2 · 2024
European Parliament Elections 2024: What Is at Stake?

Adobe Stock|#214469252

Forum · Issue 1 · 2024
Artificial Intelligence: Potential and Challenges for Europe

Forum · Issue 6 · 2023
The Future of EU Public Finances

European defence
Debt Financing European Air Defence

European air defence is a European public good. Joint funding is thus justified to ensure sufficient provisioning, write Armin Steinbach and Guntram Wolff. Debt funding is economically justified and would also benefit the development of European industrial defence capacities in air defence.

AdobeStock|508844902

Forum
The Challenges of Defence Spending in Europe

The realisation that Europe’s defence industry needs political support has taken some time, but it is now an important point of consensus between EU member states and political groupings in the European Parliament. Yet, as Daniel Fiott argues, defence expenditure is an intensely political affair, which makes our ability to assess the quality of defence investments harder.

International Trade
EU Concerns About Chinese Subsidies

China uses subsidies extensively to take a leading role in the global markets of green-tech products such as battery electric vehicles and wind turbines. Against the background of the current EU investigations into Chinese subsidies in these sectors, Frank Bickenbach, Dirk Dohse, Rolf Langhammer and Wan-Hsin Liu take a careful look at the Chinese subsidy system.

stock.adobe.com|328207043

Editorial
Organizing for Victory...or Self- Deterrence?

The recent NATO Summit in Washington was a missed opportunity, writes Ben Hodges. The priority of the West has been avoiding escalation with Russia. But this is actually prolonging the war in Ukraine and giving Russia the time it needs to rebuild its forces.

AdobeStock|332817495

Forum
Europe’s Cyber Defence Posture

A paradigm shift from reactive to active cyber defence is only justifiable with democratic support. At the foundation of this approach is a public understanding of the strategic environment and of the conditions that shape cyberspace as a permanently contested field of conflict, write Annegret Bendiek and Jakob Bund.

Letter from America
The US Economy and the Election

Trump's plans, should he return to the White House, include reducing the role of the federal income tax and replacing it with revenues from sky-high tariffs on imports. This would be deeply harmful to both the US economy and the world economy, write Kimberly Clausing and Maurice Obstfeld.

Quote of the Month

"Put simply, defence can only truly thrive when it benefits from a consistent source of investment over multiple years and decades. Kick-starting a virtuous defence industrial cycle, where militaries can procure cost-effective and high-performance equipment and systems, requires long-term planning and investments."

Daniel Fiott

The Challenges of Defence Spending in Europe

Current Issue

Volume 59
2024
Issue 4

Read online

Figure of the Month

Annual average peace dividend and investment deficits, 1990-2023 (bn euros, price adjusted, 2023 prices)

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the threat of war on Europe’s eastern border ended and defence spending fell significantly in all countries. Many European NATO members reduced their annual expenditure to a very low level of 1.1%-1.5% of GDP – including Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands. As a result, national governments generated an annual “peace dividend” for other spending categories, primarily to finance and expand their welfare states.