Brussels proposes to apply the European tactic with vaccines to the purchase of weapons

We did it with vaccines and it worked, why not apply the same learning to the purchase of weapons?, propose the European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, and the Vice President of the European Commission and High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, in a letter sent last week to European defense ministers, with a copy to all national industry associations active in this field.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
15 November 2022 Tuesday 06:31
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Brussels proposes to apply the European tactic with vaccines to the purchase of weapons

We did it with vaccines and it worked, why not apply the same learning to the purchase of weapons?, propose the European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, and the Vice President of the European Commission and High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, in a letter sent last week to European defense ministers, with a copy to all national industry associations active in this field. Working together, with the help of the European Commission, the countries of the European Union have become in a matter of months "the main producer and exporter of covid-19 vaccines in the world," Breton and Borrell argue in the letter, to which La Vanguardia has had access.

"The security situation in Europe is changing", said Borrell upon arrival at the meeting. Both due to the geopolitical shift caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and due to the fact that the national arsenals of the member states have been decimated by the shipments to Kyiv, the countries of the European Union are doomed to an urgent rearmament process. "It is necessary to recover the availability of its forces as soon as possible, react to gaps in critical capabilities and replenish emptied stocks," states the letter from the two commissioners, who propose to European capitals.

The support of the task force for joint defense purchases created by the European Commission last July can help member states "avoid a race of orders that would result in a spiral of prices, an excessive concentration of demand in the same period of time, scarcity of resources and, in the case of the most exposed member states, difficulties in securing essential items," they argue. This community body, they clarify, does not intend to make the purchases instead of the member states but "mitigate potential conflicts between parallel purchase calls in different member states."

Experience to date in European defense indicates that, in the absence of real coordination by a common body, be it NATO or the EU, member states tend to resort to different military equipment models, which makes interoperability and prevents European industry from exploiting economies of scale. For Breton, French and responsible for the Internal Market, the reinforcement of the European industrial base is an additional incentive in this strategy. The European Commission has already determined what the member states' needs for military material are at the moment and is now preparing to determine what manufacturing capacities are necessary to respond to that demand, for which it calls on governments to identify "potential actors" in their respective national industries and ask them to participate in the consultation.

"Despite years of under-investment in defence, the EU's industrial and technological base has retained a considerable variety of first-class products thanks to its competitiveness. The main challenge is to increase its production capacity, something that it also affects our allies," states the letter, which then presents the argument of the European Commission's experience in promoting the manufacture of vaccines.

Borrell and Breton's proposal will be discussed today by the European defense ministers in the framework of the analysis of the situation of the European Fund for Peace, the intergovernmental instrument created to finance arms shipments to Ukraine, which is about to run out means. Yesterday, the foreign ministers of the European Union reiterated to their Ukrainian counterpart, Dmitro Kuleba, that it is up to their government alone, and no one else, to decide when it is time to sit down to negotiate with Russia and that they will support Ukraine "until victory". " final.