Thanks to its unparalleled defense budget, the United States possesses a comparative and competitive advantage in arms production. This confronts US allies with the US hegemony dilemma, a trade-off between efficiency and autonomy. Allies can procure comparably cheap high-end weaponry from US sources instead of securing more costly autonomy in arms supply. Overall, US defense industrial market power forces its allies to specialize in arms production, thus, to decide what kinds of weapon systems to produce on their own, where to cooperate, and when to buy American. What explains US allies’ specific arms acquisition decisions? I confine my analysis to Europe since it represents a fascinating case with its unparalleled regional economic and political integration of sovereign states and its security relationship with the US. I focus on the missile sector, a rather understudied arms production sector compared to fighter aircraft and drones. I argue that costs drive Europeans’ arming decisions with buying American being the most efficient option. However, five intervening variables can help lower autonomy’s costs or make those costs more bearable. These are the state of the defense industrial base, state-industry relations, the expected domestic market size, the expected export market size, and the fear of strategic dependence. I test my theory of European missile acquisition on a unique data set comprising international arms transfers from SIPRI as well as indiviudally collected data on domestic or partly domestic missile procurement between 1980-2020. The quantitative analysis is supplemented by case studies on specific European missile programs.

Martins and Mawdsley (2021) argued that from the 1960s onward, the EU gradually developed a sociotechnical imaginary around defence technology and innovation that eventually materialised in the European Defence Fund (EDF). While responding to fears about defence technological gaps with the US was one driver, it was a vision shaped by decades of comparative peace and security. Since the inauguration of the EDF, the renewed Russian invasion of Ukraine and the realities of inter-state war on the European continent have challenged this vision of the future. While Thierry Breton and other predominantly French actors have tried to adjust the vision of the EDF to what he calls a war economy, other alternatives have emerged and challenged this view. Sismondo (2020) suggests that to be analytically useful in STS, sociotechnical imaginaries need to have stability, but that, in reality, many are contested and flexible. What happens when competing sociotechnical imaginaries collide at a time when urgent decisions need to be taken that could reshape the future? The paper examines the contestation process and asks whether the sociotechnical imaginary retains analytical utility in moments of intense contestation.

We argue that the Dependent Market Economy (DME) model has explanatory potential for the resulting, and very specific, features of defence industries in EU countries applying this model in their general economies. This contrasts with LME and CME models otherwise applicable to countries with successful defence industries. Defence industries in Dependent Market Economies are thus rendered less competitive and more resistant to collaboration and integration – key to the globalization of armaments production. As the DME model is particularly applicable to ECE EU countries, we focus on this region and specifically on those countries with larger defence industries. We find three mechanisms through which the DME model is found to be instrumental in shaping defence industries. Firstly, in countries operating this general economic model, the defence industry is, more than other segments, seen as a high-value-added and high-skill production sector, which generates significant economic benefits for these countries. Secondly, due to the constrains of the single market of the European Union, the defence industry is uniquely eligible for state aid and public procurement, which can be used to support domestic production and technological innovation, in the direct inverse of the DME model logic. Finally, the defence industry is associated with sovereignty and agency, which may be particularly important for DMEs seeking to assert their independence from foreign investment. Our article expands the varieties of (defence) capitalism literature to a brand new and unexplored category with relevant repercussions amidst the revival of defence industries in EU ECE countries. 

European security is not just about strategy, defence policy, alliances, air forces, navies, and armies. It is also about the production, trade, and procurement of the armaments used by the armed forces of the EU Member States and their allies. The war in Ukraine has increased the importance of armaments procurement in the EU significantly.

This paper investigates the use of soft law by the European Commission in defence procurement regulation. Armaments are goods and the EU has competence to regulate the Internal Market through hard law. Defence, however, remains largely the domain of the Member States and the CSDP. The armaments exemption in Art.346(1)(b)TFEU determines the borderline of EU Internal Market competence. In 1999 the Court of Justice clarified that it is not a categorical exemption thereby paving the way for EU secondary legislation on armaments.

In 2009 the EU legislator enacted the Defence and Security Procurement Directive 2009/81 in which it carefully adapted the rules of the ‘civilian’ Public Sector Procurement Directive to the needs of the defence sector to reduce the use of the armaments exemption in Art.346(1)(b)TFEU. This binding hard law instrument aims to facilitate an EU Internal Market for defence goods. In its 2016 Review of the Directive, the Commission argued that no amendments were necessary, and the Directive was left untouched. Shortly after the enactment of the Directive, the Commission had issued seven “guidance notes” regarding the interpretation of the Directive on its field of application, exclusions, research and development, security of supply, security of information, subcontracting, and offsets. In 2016 the Commission added a notice providing guidance on the government-to-government contracts exemption amending the earlier guidance note on exclusions in this respect. A Commission recommendation regarding the participation of Small and Medium Size enterprises in defence procurement followed in 2018 and a guidance note on cooperative defence procurement in 2019. All these post-2009 instruments qualify as soft law: they are not legally binding and can thus not directly be enforced, while they still can have legal effects.

This paper will test the existing EU soft law on defence procurement against the EU legislative standards of legitimacy, effectiveness, and transparency, and makes recommendations towards the improvement of this soft law in view of these standards.

For several years now, France has been advocating the creation of an autonomous European capacity. Originally conceived for intervention on the European Union's southern flank, this capability is now confronted with the urgency resulting from Russia's aggressiveness on its eastern flank. The French project has been weakened by NATO's dominance in this area, and by its neglect of Europe's eastern defense. However, while Paris has so far remained a rather reticent ally within NATO (Schmitt and Pannier 2021), the war in Ukraine has forced it to become more involved (cf. the creation of a battalion in Romania under French command). While it is still too early to speak of the return of the European pillar project to NATO within French foreign policy, the changes underway in the positioning of the latter are questionable, given the roles traditionally defended by France (Holsti 1970, Borzillo 2021).

At a time when the internal workings of NATO are about to experience numerous changes in the wake of the war, this paper sets out to analyze the developments underway in France, and to put them into perspective with Paris's recurrent promotion of concepts such as strategic autonomy. The paper is structured around three points: contrary to the fears expressed by some, the context in Europe since 1949 has never been so favorable to the project of European military autonomy; the realization of this, including through the creation of new mechanisms within the EU or other bodies, clearly and necessarily requires the establishment of close ties with NATO for several reasons, but the two main ones can be summarized through the notions of path dependence and institutional entanglement (Hofmann 2010); paradoxically, France finds itself unable to support this idea of European military autonomy, as the close ties with NATO it implies run counter to the roles traditionally claimed by members of the French politico-military apparatus (Borzillo 2021).

►Borzillo Laurent « Quels partenaires choisir pour les groupements tactiques de l’Union européenne ? Analyse des politiques de défense française et allemande et de leurs choix d’alliance », (2021).

►Hofmann, Stephanie. « Why Institutional Overlap Matters: CSDP in the European Security Architecture », (2010).

►Holsti, Karl. « National Role Conceptions in the Study of Foreign Policy », (1970).

►Schmitt, Olivier et Alice Pannier. French Defence Policy since the End of the Cold War, (2021).