March EU Council to Focus on Defence and Competitiveness

The EU is ramping up military spending and pushing for strategic autonomy as Trump negotiates a Ukraine peace deal without European leaders. A new defence white paper is expected to focus on air defence, cybersecurity and financing mechanisms to boost Europe’s military capabilities.

The EU is accelerating efforts to boost defence spending as Donald Trump pushes ahead with negotiations on a Ukraine peace deal without European leaders. ‘We cannot just be looking around, waiting for the moves of other global actors and then decide what to do next — we need to do it the other way around,’ Poland’s undersecretary of state for European affairs, Magdalena Sobkowiak-Czarnecka, told POLITICO.

At the emergency European Council summit on 6 March, leaders are expected to push to expand Europe’s defence industry. A draft of the summit conclusions calls for using ‘flexibilities’ in the EU’s Stability and Growth Pact to allow member states to ‘substantially increase defence expenditure’. Other planned measures include easing procurement rules with a ‘defence-specific simplification omnibus’ and making it easier for weapons manufacturers to access European Investment Bank loans.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has already proposed exempting defence spending from EU government spending limits and floated plans for an integrated European air defence system. This could include deep- and precision-strike capabilities, drones, missiles, ammunition and potentially the military use of AI – part of a broader effort to significantly enhance defence capabilities, von der Leyen added. For his part, Friedrich Merz, Germany’s Chancellor-in-waiting, has called for Europe to ‘achieve independence from the USA‘ and potentially replace NATO with a new defence structure.