Towards a European Defence Union? Military Burden Sharing in the European Union 2006-2013

Abstract

According to the European Council (2013), Defence matters. However, the extent to which defence does matter appears to vary among the member states. Kollias (2008), analyzing burden sharing and free-riding behaviour of fifteen members of the European Union (EU15) over the year 2001, asks: Suppose the EU15 would create a formal military alliance offering an umbrella of collective defence and security, what member states would be considered over-contributing or under-contributing in providing collective defence and security? Kollias concludes, out of all EU15 members, France, Greece, Italy and the UK would be over-contributing regarding the costs they occur in producing collective military strength if a common European defence came into existence. All other EU countries would be under-contributing compared to the benefits they would enjoy. Our paper aims to revisit Kollias’ analysis and to find out, if, nowadays, EU member states would have moved towards each other in the provision of EU-wide defence and security and whether the same would hold regarding the distribution of costs and benefits. We find that over the period 2006-2013 change has occurred. Over this timespan, if united in EDU, Greece would have been considered an under-contributing country, while Germany would count as an over-contributing country.