Euroviews. Si vis pacem, para bellum

As the Latin saying goes, if you want peace, prepare for a war. That is why, in an increasingly unstable world, the EU must strengthen its own defence, and we must ensure that we are able to defend ourselves.

This will not be possible without concrete action and political will, which has been absent for decades among the member states. But the upcoming tenure of the first-ever European Commissioner for Defence and Space promises to shake the EU out of its lethargy.

More detailed ways of enabling Europe to defend itself have been recently discussed within our political family, the EPP Group, culminating in the adoption of a strategic paper entitled "A Europe that protects: a Europe that stands for true peace, building a true European Defence Union”.

The solution is clear: we must take action now, and we must do so decisively, both in the short term and the long term.

To put the scale into perspective, over the past decade, Moscow and Beijing have increased their defence budgets by almost 300% and 600%, respectively. At the same time, EU countries have only increased theirs by 20%.

Even now, not all European NATO allies have met the 2% of GDP target. We must step up — it is a matter of credibility.

Experts warn that Russia will be able to launch a full-scale attack on the EU and NATO within the next five years. Europe must, therefore, finally take its security into its own hands and become capable and willing to defend itself and its interests. In our strategic paper, we advocate five concrete steps to get there.

First, we need a true European Single Market of Defence. The persistent inefficiency of the European defence market leads to unnecessary duplication, poor effectiveness of defence spending, and thus a waste of