NATO, EU officials urge lawmakers to remove defence production hurdles

National parliaments should cut regulations holding back the continent’s defence ramp-up, senior officials from NATO and the European Union said at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly on Monday, noting that production remains slow.

“You can really help us get rid of any obstacles when it comes to increased defence production, but also when it comes to defence industrial cooperation,” NATO’s Deputy Secretary General Radmila Shekerinska told lawmakers.

The comments came during the NATO Parliamentary Assembly session in Vilnius, which brings together almost 300 lawmakers from NATO countries to discuss security and defence-related issues.

Europeans have boosted their defence investments and pledged to dedicate 5% of their GDP to defence by 2035, following repeated calls from the US for NATO allies to take on a larger share of the burden.

Massive investments in the industry have led to higher weapons production on the continent, Shekerinska highlighted.

But officials both at NATO headquarters and around the Schuman roundabout have shared frustration over the limited pace of the industrial ramp-up.

On Monday, EU Defence Commissioner Andrius Kubilius called on national lawmakers to hold their governments accountable.

“European national parliaments need to ask governments: Why are our industries not scaling up despite the fact that money is increasing?” he said.

Last month, lawmakers and member states reached a compromise on two of the three files in a package to simplify EU rules to allow for better competition between defence companies and to speed up production capacity across the bloc.

Kubilius painted a sobering picture of the current state of play in Europe, as negotiations on the outstanding file to simplify cross-border transfers of defence goods within the EU are still ongoing.

Currently, defence companies need specific licences to move equipment and subsystems within the EU, which can slow cross-company cooperation.

“We have no single defence market in Europe, no competition, lack of innovations, and lack of industrial ramp-up,” he said, adding that most procurement is directly awarded to national champions without any competition due to the national security exemption in EU treaties.

The defence commissioner has worked towards establishing a single market for defence, one of the key tasks identified by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at the start of his mandate last year. Kubilius later laid out this vision through a series of initiatives in the Defence Readiness Roadmap.

He also pitched the creation of a Defence Union, which a cross-party group of MEPs endorsed last month, calling on capitals to support deeper European defence integration and joint procurement mechanisms.

“The fight for a single defence market in the European Union is also the fight for the possibility to have a modern defence doctrine on a national level,” Kubilius said in Vilnius.

(cm, aw)