Market Size and the Political Economy of European Defense

‘A Sovereign Europe’? Strategic Use of Discourse at the Service of French Economic Interests in EU Politics (2017–2022)

“…Economies of scale are thus depicted as indispensable for ‘European sovereignty’, an argument long defended by the European Commission (Juncker 2018). Calcara and Simon (2021, p. 875) show that ‘president Emmanuel Macron's impulse and cooperation with Commission President Jean‐Claude Juncker provided the political foundation for the 8 billion euros European Defence Fund (EDF) and ensured that the initiative kept momentum and support’. A closely associated development has been the creation of a Directorate General for Defence and Space (DG DEFIS), which the French government ensured would be under the authority of French internal market commissioner Thierry Breton, a close ally of Macron.…”

Toward a more ‘sovereign’ Europe? Domestic, bilateral, and European factors to explain France’s (growing) influence on EU politics, 2017–2022

“…An official from the Commission’s Directorate-General for defense industry, DG DEFIS, explained that “strategic autonomy is a French priority because around half of the EU’s defense industries are French” (Interview 18). Indeed, the French government essentially wants to create a protected defense market at the EU level to exclude third-country producers and ensure the competitive advantage of its own companies (Calcara and Simon 2021 ).…”

“…Moreover, Germany’s defense industrial policy preferences already converged significantly with Macron’s agenda, as the country traditionally favors a “process of positive state-building in military force generation” (Biermann and Weiss 2021 : 228). The large size of their defense market also meant that German policymakers shared France’s preference for “high-entry barriers” to non-European producers (Calcara and Simon 2021 : 864). Following the French-German Security Council in July 2017, merely two months after Macron’s election, the two governments announced a comprehensive bilateral cooperation agenda for defense industrial policy including the joint development of two of the costliest armaments programs in European history: the Main Ground Combat System (MGCS) and the FCAS (Kempin and Kunz 2017 ).…”

“…This very first instance of EU-level defense spending will amount to €8 billion 3 in the 2021–2027 period, making the EDF the third largest defense R&D budget in the EU after those of France and Germany. While the EDF officially came as a Commission initiative, Calcara and Simon ( 2021 : 875) remark that “president Emmanuel Macron’s impulse and cooperation with Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker provided the political foundation for the EDF and ensured that the initiative kept momentum and support”.…”