Europe is entering a new era of rearmament with unprecedented financial firepower — but with one increasingly urgent question: can hundreds of billions of euros actually be converted into credible military capability by 2030?
The latest picture presented by the European Court of Auditors is striking in terms of spending, but far more complicated when measured against actual defence readiness.
EU member states’ annual defence budgets are expected to reach approximately €454 billion in 2026, following a dramatic acceleration in expenditure.
The trajectory is remarkable: spending rose from €288 billion in 2023 to €343 billion in 2024 and €418 billion in 2025.
Yet the central problem remains.
Europe is still not buying defence as a single strategic power.
To a significant extent, it is buying as 27 individual states.
And that fragmentation is precisely the gap that money alone cannot close.
€454bn Does Not Automatically Create European Military Power
Europe’s rearmament drive is now operating on a scale that would have been politically unimaginable only a few years ago.
The broader ReArm Europe/Readiness 2030 framework aims to enable the mobilisation of more than €800 billion in additional defence spending and investment.
But the auditors’ warning goes beyond headline spending figures.
The critical question is how efficiently those resources are transformed into deployable military capabilities.
Europe continues to face shortages in areas including ammunition, missiles, air defence and military mobility, while defence manufacturers are being asked to expand production capacity at extraordinary speed after decades of comparatively limited demand.
The contradiction is becoming clear:
Europe has found additional money faster than it can build additional industrial capacity.
The Problem of Europe’s “27 Armies”
This remains one of the structural weaknesses at the heart of European defence.
Capability decisions are still predominantly national.
Governments establish their own requirements, technical specifications, procurement schedules and industrial priorities.
The result is fragmentation: multiple weapons platforms, smaller production runs, reduced economies of scale and continuing interoperability challenges.
Brussels is trying to reverse that model by encouraging joint procurement and aggregation of demand.
That is also a central objective of SAFE: reducing fragmentation and using large-scale orders to strengthen Europe’s defence industrial base.
The ultimate test, therefore, is no longer simply whether Europe spends more.
It is whether Europe can finally buy together.
SAFE: The €150bn Instrument Reshaping Europe’s Arms Market
At the centre of this transformation sits SAFE — Security Action for Europe, with up to €150 billion available.
But there is an important distinction.
SAFE is not a €150 billion grant programme.
It provides long-term loans to participating member states, financed through EU borrowing on capital markets.
That gives governments access to large-scale financing for urgent defence investment.
But it does not eliminate the fiscal cost.
It pushes part of that cost further into the future.
For highly indebted member states in particular, that distinction matters.
The 65% Rule: Keeping Defence Billions Inside Europe
SAFE is not merely a financing instrument.
It is also an industrial policy tool.
Under the framework, the cost of components originating outside the EU, EEA-EFTA states and Ukraine generally cannot exceed 35% of the estimated cost of the end product.
The political objective is unmistakable.
Europe does not simply want to purchase more weapons.
It wants the coming defence boom to generate factories, jobs, intellectual property, technological expertise and resilient supply chains inside Europe.
This is where defence policy begins to merge with geoeconomics.
Hundreds of billions of euros in future orders are potentially at stake — and European governments increasingly want those orders to reinforce European industrial power.
US Dependence Is the Elephant in the Room
Europe wants speed.
It also wants greater strategic autonomy.
Those objectives do not always align.
In several critical defence sectors, American companies offer mature systems, established production lines and proven capabilities that European governments can purchase relatively quickly.
Developing or expanding European alternatives can strengthen long-term autonomy but may require additional time.
This creates one of the fundamental dilemmas behind Readiness 2030:
buy immediately from where capability already exists — or accept greater short-term risk to build European industrial independence?
The answer will shape not only European military readiness but the defence-industrial relationship between Europe and the United States for years to come.
Another Major Gap: Moving Armies Across Europe
Weapons alone are not enough.
Europe must also be able to move them.
Heavy armour, ammunition, air-defence systems and troops need roads, railways, bridges and ports capable of supporting rapid military deployment across the continent.
Military mobility has consequently become one of the least glamorous but most strategically important elements of European deterrence.
And the scale of the infrastructure gap is significant.
The EU auditors have previously highlighted serious delays and cost increases in major cross-border transport projects, warning that the core trans-European transport network will not be completed by 2030 as originally planned.
European military readiness will therefore be decided not only inside missile and ammunition factories.
It will also be decided on Europe’s railways, bridges and ports.
Greece Is Already Near the Front of Europe’s Defence-Spending Table
For Athens, the implications are particularly significant.
The auditors’ figures show Greece spending approximately €6.5 billion on defence in 2024, equivalent to around 2.8% of GDP.
That placed Greece among the EU member states carrying the highest defence burden relative to the size of their economies.
Athens had therefore already entered a high-spending defence cycle before much of Europe dramatically accelerated its own rearmament.
But the question facing Greece is now changing.
It is no longer only how much Athens spends.
It is how much of that spending stays inside the Greek economy.
Greece’s Bigger Opportunity: From Buyer to Producer
This is where the new European defence architecture creates an important strategic opportunity.
The economic return from Greece’s next procurement cycle should not be measured solely in frigates, missiles, aircraft, drones or air-defence batteries.
It can also be measured through Greek value added, technology transfer, co-production, maintenance rights, intellectual property and integration into European supply chains.
Hellenic Aerospace Industry, Hellenic Defence Systems, ELVO, Greek shipyards and a growing ecosystem of private defence-technology companies can potentially compete for work in drones, counter-drone systems, electronics, communications, ammunition, naval platforms, sensors and surveillance technologies.
If Greece remains predominantly a customer, much of the economic value generated by its defence spending will flow abroad.
If it uses SAFE and wider European programmes to secure industrial participation, however, defence spending could also generate a domestic industrial multiplier.
€454bn Also Means a Battle for Europe’s Factories
This may ultimately become the biggest economic story behind European rearmament.
Europe is not merely redistributing military budgets.
It is redistributing industrial power.
Countries that secure new production lines for missiles, ammunition, drones, radar systems, warships and defence electronics could acquire investment, skilled employment and technological expertise lasting for decades.
France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland and the Nordic states all have powerful industrial interests in this emerging competition.
Greece must therefore decide whether it intends to remain primarily on the demand side of Europe’s defence market — or establish itself more firmly on the production side.
The Oversight Problem Gets Bigger as the Money Multiplies
There is another warning embedded in the auditors’ assessment.
European defence financing is becoming increasingly complex.
SAFE sits alongside the European Defence Fund, ASAP, EDIRPA, EDIP, national budgets and new fiscal flexibility for defence spending.
That creates opportunities, but also governance risks.
Overlapping instruments can increase the danger of fragmented investment, insufficient coordination and potentially duplicate financing.
More importantly, the European Court of Auditors itself does not currently have an audit mandate covering every entity and financing mechanism involved in the emerging European defence architecture.
That becomes increasingly significant when defence expenditure is rising at historic speed.
Europe is therefore trying to solve two problems simultaneously:
spend much faster — and still demonstrate that every euro produces measurable capability.
Europe’s Great Defence Paradox
The European Court of Auditors ultimately exposes a striking paradox.
Europe can spend more on defence than at any point in its recent history and still retain serious capability gaps.
Because wars are not won by budget headlines.
What matters is how many missiles are available, how quickly ammunition can be replenished, whether different forces can operate together, whether military equipment can move rapidly across borders and whether industry can replace equipment lost in a high-intensity conflict.
That is the real test of Readiness 2030.
The programme will not ultimately be judged by how many billions Brussels and national capitals announce.
It will be judged by whether Europe can convert those billions into missiles, drones, ammunition stocks, factories, infrastructure and credible deterrence.
For Greece, the challenge goes one step further: turning the new defence cycle not only into stronger Armed Forces, but into a permanent position for Greek industry inside Europe’s emerging defence production map.
Πηγή: pagenews.gr