EU arms race: rising budgets, disparate capabilities

Léo Péria-Peigné. Assess­ing the state of defence cap­ab­il­it­ies with­in the European Uni­on is a com­plex exer­cise, as most of the data avail­able is purely the­or­et­ic­al. In prac­tice, these forces have not been deployed in the field and have not seen com­bat in real con­di­tions since the 2000s and 2010s, dur­ing the wars in Iraq and Afgh­anistan. In 2025, Ukrain­i­an forces are the only ones in Europe that can claim to have tested their mil­it­ary cap­ab­il­it­ies in a high-intens­ity con­flict¹.

For the rest, European coun­tries have benefited from the “peace dividend” over the last three dec­ades by sig­ni­fic­antly redu­cing their mil­it­ary budgets in favour of oth­er sec­tors. Some states, such as Bel­gi­um and the Neth­er­lands, even chose to aban­don expens­ive equip­ment – such as tanks and rock­et launch­ers – in the 1990s and 2010s. Now they are seek­ing to rebuild their former cap­ab­il­it­ies. While defence budgets are gen­er­ally on the rise, fuelled by a polit­ic­al desire to rein­vest in the long term and recre­ate oper­a­tion­al com­bat units, it will take time to see the bene­fits. Accord­ing to the armed forces, it will take between five and ten years to rebuild or restore full capabilities.

Since 2022, France has gradu­ally with­drawn from its oper­a­tions in West Africa and the Sahel, retain­ing only two per­man­ent bases, in Gabon and Dji­bouti. French units retain a cer­tain level of oper­a­tion­al skills and deploy­ment cap­ab­il­it­ies. While they can cer­tainly draw on their exper­i­ence, the threats they are pre­par­ing for in Europe are not of the same nature as those faced in recent asym­met­ric wars. Ques­tions arise as to wheth­er their resources are adequate to face an adversary such as Russia.

All branches com­bined, the total num­ber of per­son­nel stands at 200,000 mil­it­ary per­son­nel² (and 41,000 reserv­ists). Although France has the second largest army in the EU, in the event of a high-intens­ity con­flict, it would cur­rently struggle to deploy more than one bri­gade – between 7,000 and 8,000 sol­diers – and to replace it with an equi­val­ent unit. How­ever, this object­ive must be achieved in the short term, before con­sid­er­ing the deploy­ment of a divi­sion (two or three bri­gades) by 2030.

Warsaw has decided to move bey­ond the­ory and has been strength­en­ing its cap­ab­il­it­ies since 2022. Approx­im­ately 4% of its nation­al budget is devoted to defence. Unlike the French author­it­ies, who have chosen to main­tain as much cap­ab­il­ity as pos­sible while redu­cing per­son­nel, Poland’s goal is not to have the most com­pre­hens­ive army in Europe. Its goal is to build the EU’s first army cap­able of respond­ing to Rus­si­an aggres­sion. It is thus the largest army in Europe, with 202,100 act­ive mil­it­ary per­son­nel (pro­fes­sion­als and volun­teers) out of a pop­u­la­tion of approx­im­ately 37 mil­lion. By focus­ing its invest­ments on spe­cif­ic stra­tegic needs, its goal for 2035 is to acquire an arsen­al of 1,600 tanks (France has 200), 1,200 artil­lery pieces and 800 rock­et launchers.

Faced with pres­sure from Rus­sia, Poland’s neigh­bours are fol­low­ing its example by increas­ing their mil­it­ary spend­ing: Esto­nia alloc­ates 3.4% of its budget to defence, fol­lowed by Latvia (3.2%) and Lithuania (2.9%).

Mil­it­ary budgets and equip­ment volumes are not always indic­at­ive of actu­al cap­ab­il­it­ies. How can rock­et launch­ers be deployed to carry out deep strikes? How can nuc­le­ar sub­mar­ines be deployed to put pres­sure on a nav­al zone? Bey­ond acquis­i­tion, it is mas­tery of oper­a­tion­al chal­lenges that is key. For example, France has not mobil­ised tanks for sev­er­al years and, in terms of elec­tron­ic war­fare, it has only very lim­ited or spe­cial­ised resources and skills.

As for the United King­dom, although it has the largest defence budget in Europe (exclud­ing Tur­key), both its army and navy are in a crit­ic­al state, marked by short­com­ings in infra­struc­ture, equip­ment and man­power. As a gen­er­al rule, the fig­ures announced in Europe can eas­ily be reduced by a third, or even half in some cases, as they always con­ceal main­ten­ance shortcomings.

The pro­lif­er­a­tion of announce­ments and invest­ments marks a sig­ni­fic­ant break with the thirty years of mil­it­ary dis­en­gage­ment that fol­lowed the end of the Cold War. Bey­ond polit­ic­al rhet­or­ic, will the European mil­it­ary land­scape have changed in 5 to 10 years? How can recruit­ment dif­fi­culties be over­come? What will be the actu­al, rather than the­or­et­ic­al, num­ber of sol­diers ready to be deployed in good order? For now, the rearm­a­ment pro­cess is still in its infancy, and years of under­in­vest­ment will have to be made up before cred­ib­il­ity can be achieved in the cur­rent geo­stra­tegic envir­on­ment, which is made up of act­ors who only com­mu­nic­ate and under­stand rela­tion­ships in terms of power.

Interview by Alicia Piveteau