Les politiques industrielles et d’acquisition de l’UE et l’OTAN : complémentarité ou concurrence ?
Federico Santopinto, Senior Research Fellow at the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs (IRIS), begins this note by stressing that “for decades, the United States has been able to distinguish between the ‘exercise of leadership’ and the ‘concept of domination’, at least in its relations with Europe. This distinction, which others in Europe have historically found more difficult to grasp (such as Russia, but also France and Germany in the past), is key to understanding NATO’s role. The Alliance has indeed been one of the main instruments of American leadership in Europe. However, it has never been a mere mechanism of subjugation… at least until now”. This domination – one might also use the word vassalisation – has always been freely accepted to a degree: “the Europeans themselves, more than anyone else, wanted to keep the United States on their continent in order to guarantee their security”, Santopinto quite correctly points out.
The times, however, are changing. “Despite the erratic nature of Donald Trump’s foreign policy, strategic documents adopted by his administration between 2025 and 2026 convey [two] messages to the Old Continent that could hardly be clearer or more direct (…). First, Europeans must ‘Europeanise NATO’. Second, they must set the EU aside”. These two injunctions stem from a rationale inspired principally by domination and are directly at odds with programmes recently set in place at European Union level to support the industrial and technological basis of European defence and work towards a longer-term goal of strategic autonomy for the Europeans.
“The Trump administration’s official terminology on this point (support will be more limited, yet must remain critical) appears nine times throughout the [National Defence Strategy] document [of 2026]. [This document] suggests that Washington intends to continue providing the Alliance with certain essential military and command capabilities on which its effective functioning depends. In other words, Washington seeks to shift from being an actor to serving as an enabler, while preserving its hegemonic position. Yet that hegemony may increasingly resemble domination rather than leadership. In this scenario, the EU clearly has no place. In the National Security Strategy adopted in November 2025, the Trump administration publicly denigrates and delegitimises the Union. It can therefore be inferred that Washington does not wish the rearmament of the Old Continent to take place within the framework of the European integration process, which aims at strategic autonomy. The EU is being called upon to take a backseat, or even disappear from the equation altogether. In recent years, indeed, it has had the audacity to outline an interventionist and protectionist industrial policy capable of competing with American companies in the military and dual-use sectors. By launching a frontal attack on the EU whilst, at the same time, calling for NATO to be ‘Europeanised’, Washington is seeking to halt this momentum, even as its security commitments to Europe weaken”, Santopinto stresses.
NATO emerges from this backdrop as the ideal framework to counteract this hegemony. Indeed, it offers a number of tools designed to facilitate military acquisitions, for instance through the NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA) and the NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCIA), along with a planning instrument, the NATO Defence Planning Process (NDPP), which “defines, for each Ally, the military capabilities it must make available to the Alliance to enable it to fulfil its mandate. In so doing, [the NDPP] contributes directly to guiding the procurement decisions of member states, including those to be developed within the framework of the EU”.
In his position as Secretary General of NATO, the former prime minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, who never forgoes an opportunity to stress the high quality of cooperation with the European Union, has regularly set out his clear view of the division of roles between NATO, which determines standards and capability requirements, and the European Union, which is supposed to pay for it (from aid to Ukraine and joint capability projects to military mobility) and support the development of industrial capacity, whilst calling for European programmes to be open to businesses from all 32 countries of the Alliance, even going so far as to coin a new concept: ‘NATO preference’, or ‘Made in NATO’, Santopinto writes.
However, “the idea that the EU’s military-industrial priorities should be defined within the framework of the NATO that may be more Europeanised, yet remains under American control, could raise several problems for Europeans. First, some EU member states are not members of the Alliance, and their needs might therefore not be fully taken into account. More importantly, NATO’s capability priorities do not necessarily coincide with those that Europeans need to pursue in order to strengthen their strategic autonomy”, Santopinto explains, going on to add that “NATO planning naturally factors the United States’ capabilities into the equation. This is precisely where the difficulty lies: European strategic autonomy is defined to a large extent in relation to Europe’s dependence on the United States”.
“This means that if the EU relies solely on the NDPP and other NATO mechanisms to identify the priorities for its defence industrial policy and joint procurement, it will never develop the capabilities and strategic enablers that the United States brings to the alliance – and which it desperately needs in order to act independently of Washington’s will. In other words, Europeans must look beyond NATO and the NDPP: they must even be able to duplicate certainty military capabilities currently provided by the United States”, the author quite rightly argues.
Santopinto goes on to make the case for the European Union establishing “its own planning capacity, in order to better direct its military-industrial resources towards choices consistent with its objective of strategic autonomy”. He explains that this is “by no means a question of ignoring or contradicting the NDPP, nor the other initiatives undertaken with NATO, but rather drawing inspiration from them whilst being able, where necessary, to go beyond them. To this end, the EU needs a form, a structure and a procedure dedicated to this task. In fact, the European Commission had envisaged such a form and structure in its initial proposal for the EDIP programme, it had envisaged the creation of a Board bringing together the member states, the European Defence Agency and the Commission itself, in order to plan the numerous actions envisaged by the programme”. But the member states rejected the notion of a committee of this kind unless its sole purpose was to ensure security of supply (article 76 of the regulation) in the framework of the new proposal for a European Competitiveness Fund (ECF), which is set out in the Union’s next Multiannual Financial Framework, the Commission renewed proposal for a “Defence Industrial Board”, with the objective of helping the institutions implement defence industrial policies, with a particular eye to a long-term investment strategy for defence policy.
As the author observes, however, “[the name] suggests that it is intended merely as an advisory structure, rather than as a body responsible for coordination and decision-making. Yet the Union does not need another advisory body. Still less does it need a structure operating at an intermediate level to oversee the instrument’s day-to-day management under EU law, as the routine management of Union programmes, including the future ECF, already falls to programme committees. These committees bring together representatives of the member states, who examine and either approve or reject the work programmes proposed by the Commission”. At this point in time, the fate of the committee is still up in the air. The capitals may try to water down its role or, even worse, place it under the aegis of the European Defence Agency. It is not that there are no competent individuals within this body, but as they are beholden to their national armament chiefs, they never get beyond the lowest common denominator. On the other hand, they are not subject to any parliamentary control, which would be a huge asset, as it is a key body with direct influence on the implementation of industrial programmes subject to the co-decision of the European Parliament and Council.
Furthermore, Santopinto explains, “any capability-planning structure will necessarily have to involve the Commission, since it is responsible for implementing the Union’s general budget and for the practical delivery of programmes supporting the EDTIB. More fundamentally, the European executive is tasked with safeguarding the general interest of the Union. Yet it is precisely this common interest that the member states struggle to define and pursue when acting on a purely intergovernmental basis”. No further comment! (Olivier Jehin)
Federico Santopinto. EU and NATO defence industrial and procurement policies: complementarity or competition? French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs. The note can be downloaded free of charge from the IRIS website: https://aeur.eu/f/no6
Le triangle des passions du monde
In this publication, which was completed in January 2026, before Donald Trump began his war against Iran, Dominique Moïsi, who has lectured at institutions such as Harvard, Kings College, London and ENA, makes the case for “rejecting the double defeat of reason and moderation” in the maelstrom of – egotistical and belligerent – passions that are dragging us all down into chaos (our translation throughout). “It is time to wake up. It is still not too late. Our duty to help remains intact. But it must be accompanied by a duty of lucidity, starting with the vital need to understand the Copernican revolution taking place before our very eyes in the United States. Once the continent of hope, America has become the continent of fear”, he writes, by way of introduction.
Having described the instrumentalisation of the justice system and the witch-hunting of a power that is attacking American democracy and challenging multilateral institutions and international law with equal vigour, Moïsi argues that “in the America of Trump II, (there is also) a particularly toxic and dangerous mix: the mix of politics and religion. The impassioned zeal that is Trumpism can trace its roots back a long way. It is an offshoot of the darkest period of American history, one that possesses all people to different degrees. It appears even more extraordinary to us as it affects a country that is still the greatest power in the world (but for how much longer?) and centres on a man, Donald Trump, whose person and, to an even greater extent, political choices embody all the characteristics of a populist leader, from absolute narcissism to utter indifference to the truth”, the author writes, going on to observe that “the current occupant of the White House is not so much the man causing the chaos to happen as the man who is forcing us to bear witness to the deconstruction of the entire order”.
The National Security Strategy of December 2025, which was “very harsh on Europe, [and] stresses the ‘civilisational destruction’ of our old world, is not simply a harsh but, in places, fair criticism of our blockages and passivity, it is a declaration of war in due form upon the European Union, not so much for what it does as for what it is: an anti-model if not the last-remaining obstacle to an America that sees the defence of our societal values, belief in the rule of law, and policies that are open to ideas and migrants as a kind of threat. The expression of an ideological resistance to the would-be irresistible rise of the new Trump-style world”, the author stresses.
“Putin, Trump and Netanyahu are all men who take the view that international justice must bow to the new reality of the world. Peace by force can have only one meaning: the right of might over the might of right”, Moïsi argues, going on to refer to Mark Carney as a model that Europe should follow: “with determination, imagination and courage, he is inventing what could and should be a post-Trump Western world. A world that is capable of forging preferential alliances between democratic countries to resist the blackmail and brutality of the United States”. He adds: “in the wake of the American peace plan for Ukraine in twenty-eight points that adds up to a position very close to that of Russia, the comparison with the German-Russian non-aggression pact that went down in history bearing the name of its co-signatories, the foreign affairs ministers of their respective countries, Ribbentrop and Molotov, signed in 1939, springs inevitably to mind. With America in the role of Germany and Russia – and even more natural comparison – that of the USSR. The elephant in the room is the implicit question: who will betray the other first? Then there is this existential question for Europe, not just Ukraine: what does the American betrayal mean to us? Can we continue to take shelter behind phrases along the lines of ‘we do not wish to die for Kiev or Riga’, cities replacing Danzig in the imagined view of a lack of awareness and cowardice?”
Touching upon Israel and the overall situation in the Middle East, Moïsi stresses that “Israel’s security can only be achieved through Israel’s legitimacy; Israel’s legitimacy can only be achieved through the existence of a Palestinian state alongside it. A state that, since 7 October 2023, is looking increasingly unlikely and increasingly vital at the same time”. “Israel is putting itself in danger and, with it, the Jewish communities of the entire world, by turning its back on ethics in preference for Realpolitik, or, more specifically, because of the religion of land”, he writes, going on to stress that “increasing numbers of the most highly qualified Israelis are choosing to leave the country” (according to an official Israeli report released in late 2025: 25% of Israelis holding doctorates in mathematics, 22% of engineers and 8% of doctors have left). Europe is not only “at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and most, if not all, of the problems of the Middle East”, but it remains “even more divided over this issue than on other dossiers that do not have the same emotional dimension”, making it, at least thus far, incapable of taking on a credible role in the stabilisation of the region. Moïsi sends Europe a warning: “[by remaining on the sidelines], Europe is running the risk of being overtaken by history. In this particular case, by the risk of inter-community violence”.
Having touched upon China’s economic muscle, which only China can slow down, whilst Donald Trump, very likely “without even being aware of it himself”, consistently places it at front and centre of geopolitics, Moïsi points out that Europe is facing a “triple challenge: the strategic challenge of Russia, the ideological challenge of America and the economic challenge of China”. He concludes that “if we choose not to give in to fear, cowardice, egotism and resist directing our focus inwards, war – albeit closer than it has ever been in my lifetime – is not inevitable”. (OJ)
Dominique Moïsi, Le triangle des passions du monde – Comprendre le chaos qui vient (available in French only). Robert Laffont. March 2026. ISBN: 978-2-2212-8543-5. 188 pages. €19,00