Defence Budgets and Cooperation in Europe: Trends and Investments

The security landscape in Europe has continued to change since 2014. In this context, national investments in defence equipment are one of the key metrics to analyse whether the fresh commitment by Europeans to spend more on defence has an effect on their military capabilities. The study provides an analysis of how and how much each of the considered 31 European countries spends on equipment. Then it turns to assess a broad range of defence cooperation developments occurred across Europe in 2015-2016, by underlining the most relevant trends. First, bilateralism continues to be the main form of cooperation, but the number of mini-lateral and multilateral cooperative efforts is also important. Second, the United States and Germany maintain a significant role in terms of defence cooperation with European allies. Third, developments took place both within and outside established frameworks for cooperation.

This is the second study published as a result of the project “Permanent Monitoring and Analysis of military capabilities and defence sector trends”, managed by a consortium of European think tanks and funded by the European Defence Agency (EDA).