Strategic Autonomy in Military Production: The EDF and the Constitutional Limits to EU Defence-Industrial Spending Power

Abstract

The European Defence Fund (EDF) has for the first time enabled the European Union (EU) to fund military equipment development in pursuit of its strategic autonomy. But the EDF was based on competences for supporting industrial and research competitiveness, and not on the Common Foreign and Security Policy/Common Security and Defence Policy (CFSP/CSDP). Since EU legal acts must be based on the functionally most appropriate competence, this choice of legal basis raises questions. This article therefore analyses whether the EDF was correctly adopted under a non-CFSP/CSDP legal basis, and if so, how its legal basis affects its capacity to contribute to EU strategic autonomy. The analysis reveals that the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) grants the EU a competence to support defence-industrial competitiveness which is separate from the CFSP/CSDP, but stands in service to its military-strategic objectives. As the EDF is politically subordinate to the CFSP/CSDP, its defence-industrial impact depends on the Member States’ ability to achieve political consensus on the EU’s defence objectives and to determine strategic research and development (R&D) priorities in line with those objectives. Yet even in the face of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, such consensus seems far off. European Defence Fund, CSDP, strategic autonomy, EU constitutional law