R&T military budget: the alert level has been reached

(BRUSSELS2) The Director of the European Defense Agency, Claude-France Arnould, heard the alarm sounded about military spending in the European Union, particularly in terms of research and technology, during the Council of Ministers of Defence, Thursday (March 22).

The numbers we have are worrying about falling budgets, particularly in terms of research and technology, and even more so for projects carried out in cooperation she explained in a response from B2 during the press conference following the Council. We can say that we have reached the alert level. The numbers are alarming ».

The decline in R&T budgets: proof by the figures

Research and technology budgets have thus been reduced by 22% over the past five years, according to data combining all the figures of the Member States (between 2006 and 2010). The latter thus only allocate barely 1% of their total defense budget to R&T (whereas they had undertaken to devote 2% to it), i.e. 2,1 billion euros in 2010. to cooperation projects, they only represent 12% of the R&T budget (whereas the objective was 20%), or 264 million euros. Which is not a big deal! Half of these projects are carried out bilaterally, mainly within the framework of Franco-British cooperation; for a number of countries (Italy, Spain, etc.), cooperation is carried out multilaterally through the European Defense Agency. All in a context of increasing equipment budgets (by catch-up effect on previous years).

Synergies with the European Commission

For Claude-France Arnould: “ it is urgent to find answers and limit the consequences of budget cuts ". " This involves very concrete things, programs proposed by ministers, demonstrations and demonstrators clarified the director of the European Defense Agency. " And above all to find synergies with the European Commission ". A meeting was thus held yesterday (Wednesday) with several Commissioners - Tajani (Industry), Malström (Interior), Kallas (Transport), Kroes (Information Society/cybersecurity) within the framework of the "High Level Security round table".

We need to improve all synergies between what is spent in the national budgets - via what can go through the budgets of the European Defense Agency - and those of the European Commission for Europe EU 2020. Clearly, it is a question of avoiding duplicates and to see if certain projects of interest to both security (civilian projects) and defense (military projects) can be financed from the research budgets of the European Commission, in particular within the framework of the next multiannual financial framework (2014- 2020).

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