The mask has slipped. Brussels would rather guard its coffers than guard Europe.

           

 

Has the EU Finally Been Unmasked on Defence?

For years we’ve heard grand claims from Brussels about “defending Europe,” “strategic autonomy,” and the need for a united front against Russian aggression. Fine words, all of them. But events of the past week have blown a hole clean through that rhetoric.

The collapse of talks on British participation in the EU’s enormous €150 billion rearmament package — the so-called Security Action for Europe (SAFE) fund — is not a dry administrative squabble. It is a moment of revelation. A moment when the mask slips. And what’s underneath is not the fearless guardian of Europe it pretends to be, but something altogether smaller: a protectionist bureaucracy obsessed with guarding its own turf and filling its own coffers.

 

A Fund Built to Defend Europe… Unless You’re the Best at It

Let’s be frank. If the EU truly wanted to defend Europe, the UK would be first on the invitation list. Britain has the strongest defence-industrial base in Europe — from next-generation missile systems to world-class aerospace to the shipyards turning out the Royal Navy’s advanced frigates. When NATO needs capability, it looks to London. When Europe needs munitions for Ukraine, it’s British workshops that ramp up production fastest.

But rather than welcome the continent’s most capable defence manufacturer, Brussels treated the whole thing like a glorified members-only club. Want to join? Fine — but pay up first. Somewhere between €4 and €6.5 billion, according to reports from the Financial Times. All for the privilege of helping defend the same continent the UK has defended for decades.

In other words: Pay us, and maybe we’ll let you contribute.

What an extraordinary inversion of priorities.

Protectionism Over Peace

You don’t need military experience to see the absurdity. Russia is waging a full-scale war on European soil. Ukraine is still fighting for survival. NATO warns of dwindling ammunition stockpiles. And into this crisis, Brussels chooses to prioritise bureaucratic gatekeeping over real-world capability.

EU insiders — including Germany, Sweden, Italy and the Netherlands — warned that shutting out the UK would send a “retrograde signal” at precisely the wrong moment. They were ignored.

The message? Europe’s security matters… but not as much as Brussels’ political pride.

The SAFE fund is beginning to look less like a shield and more like a tariff wall — a mechanism designed not to strengthen Europe’s defences, but to protect EU industries from outside competition. Even if that competition would help deter the greatest threat to European safety in a generation.

Has the EU Finally Been Unmasked?

And here we arrive at the hard question — one the EU has worked very hard to avoid:

Has Brussels finally been unmasked?

When the threat is abstract, the EU speaks like a superpower. But when the threat is real — Russian armour grinding across a sovereign European state — the EU behaves exactly as many critics have long suspected: as a rigid, self-interested bureaucracy that cares more about maintaining control than protecting its people.

The UK didn’t walk away because it didn’t want to contribute. It walked away because Brussels insisted on treating collective defence like a transactional marketplace. What price peace? Apparently €6 billion and a stack of administrative levies.

If this is “European solidarity,” then heaven help us.

The EU Loves Power — But Not Responsibility

The SAFE fiasco exposes a larger truth. Brussels is brilliant at building institutions, drafting regulations and issuing declarations. But when it comes to acting as a genuine strategic leader — taking hard decisions, working with partners who don’t fit neatly into its rulebook, pooling sovereignty where it matters — it falls short again and again.

Real defence requires flexibility. Agility. Interoperability. The willingness to work with whoever strengthens the mission.

The EU’s response?

A bureaucratic tollbooth.

And so the question becomes unavoidable:

Does the EU care more about keeping Britain out than keeping Russia back?

Because if Europe’s safety depends on the EU maintaining political purity rather than welcoming capability, then Europe has a much bigger problem than it realises.

Europe Needs Defence — Not Dogma

Let’s be candid. Europe’s security architecture already has a backbone. It’s called NATO. That is where deterrence lives. That is where the real military capability is generated. And NATO works because it recognises a simple truth: shared defence is about contribution, not conformity.

Brussels, by contrast, seems intent on reinventing defence in its own image — slow, procedural and inward-looking.

At a time when European security is under the greatest strain since the Cold War, the EU had a chance to show leadership. Instead, it showed its hand.

The mask has slipped.

And what we see is not a strategic guardian — but a protectionist machine more concerned with hoarding influence and money than facing down danger.

Europe deserved better. It still does.

Lt Col Stuart Crawford is a defence analyst and former army officer. Sign up for his podcasts and newsletters at www.DefenceReview.uk

 

 

Lt Col Stuart Crawford’s latest book Tank Commander (Hardback) is available now

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