Brussels, 7 February 2024
It is a great pleasure to join you today. I would like to start by congratulating you, dear Nadia (Calviño), on your appointment as head of the EIB. I wish you the very best. I have no doubt that you will build on the excellent work of your predecessor, Werner Hoyer.
Dear Luc (Frieden), we are happy to be in your beautiful country. A bit disappointed with the weather, but you are new in the job and we don’t want to blame you today for that.
Climate change, the digital revolution, pandemics, conflicts, and wars in our direct neighbourhood. Europe, like the rest of world, is confronting greater uncertainties, and how we tackle these challenges will shape our Union for decades to come. That’s why today I would like to focus on the need to invest more and better in our security and defence.
We belong to a generation that has always seen the European Union as a project for peace and prosperity. Peace and prosperity – they are intrinsically linked at the heart of our Union, each a condition for the other. In his famous declaration, Robert Schuman envisioned a union of interests in the coal and steel sectors – even back then, it was already about energy and resources.
But Schuman and the other founding fathers were also aware that peace could only be guaranteed through security, and this gave rise to Jean Monnet’s ambitious plan for a European Defence Community. But after this was rejected in 1954, this notion of a genuine European security community faded from memory, while NATO continued to strengthen its role as the guarantor of security in Europe.
Today peace and security are again under attack, in Europe and across the world. Russia’s war against Ukraine has served as a stark reminder. Peace within our EU borders is not enough to guarantee peace beyond our borders. Almost 70 years after the idea of a European Defence Community, the challenge of our generation is clearer than ever: we must build our European sovereignty, our open strategic autonomy, brick by brick, and faster.
We must build a strong and influential Union with the power to promote our values, the power to defend our interests, and the power to make a positive impact on the world. This means being strong inside our borders and strong beyond our borders. To achieve this, we know what is needed. We must focus on two vital areas: first, reinforcing our economic base through investment, innovation, and technologies, and second, bolstering our security and defence, both anchored in our strong democratic values.
Our single market is the backbone of our prosperity. For over 30 years, it has fuelled economic growth and improved the daily lives of millions of citizens across the EU. The rest of the world envies our quality of life and our social model but we need to complete the single market to get the most out of this powerful engine.
Let me share two examples with you. Data sharing in the health sector is critical to improving care and fostering medical breakthroughs. Yet medical systems across the EU do not systematically recognise each other’s data. We must change that.
And in the field of transportation, a simple road trip can get very complicated. For instance, a trip from Belgium to Slovakia. Only digital documents are needed in Belgium; paper documents are needed in Germany; digital documents can be shown in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. And in one Member State you will get a fine if you don’t have paper documents. This shows that we need to make it easier for our businesses and support them to grow and bring their ideas to the market.
Access to capital is another example. The difference in business investment between Europe and America – as you point out in your annual investment report – should spur us to integrate our financial markets in Europe. A fully-fledged capital markets union would get investment and savings flowing through the veins of markets across our Union. And we need to speed this up. We all know stories of promising European start-ups bought by foreign companies because they couldn’t get capital here at home in Europe.
Defence is a pillar for our European sovereignty. We must act more quickly and more decisively, and this will be my main message today.
Since the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine, we have broken countless taboos. We are doing what would have been unthinkable even a few days before the start of the war, delivering arms to Ukraine through the European Peace Facility for over €5 billion. The EU and Member States’ military support to Ukraine since the start of the war is roughly €28 billion.
We are jointly procuring military equipment. Sixty framework contracts, negotiated in a few months by the European Defence Agency, will be used to place more joint orders. This will allow the procurement of parts and munition for deliveries in 2024 and 2025 totalling €1.5 billion. We are also ramping up our military production. Our production capacity of 155mm ammunition shells has increased by over 40% since the beginning of the war against Ukraine.
These collective decisions have ushered in a new era in our common European defence, leading us towards a real Defence Union. I am convinced that a genuine single market for defence should underpin this new era of European security. Defence expenditure by European allies increased on average by more than 8% last year, and this was the ninth consecutive year of increased defence spending. In 2022, a quarter of total defence spending – or almost €60 billion – was allocated to defence investment. In other words, we could invest at least €600 billion in defence over the next ten years.
This provides a unique opportunity to be more coherent and more efficient. This provides a unique opportunity to break the pattern of market fragmentation, fragmentation of demand and fragmentation of supply. We need to make progress improving our regulatory framework, making financing and orders more predictable for our defence industry. And that is why we welcome your decision at the EIB to contribute €8 billion to this financing. In December, at our European Council, we called for “an enhanced role of the European Investment Bank Group in support of European security and defence”.
We must guarantee peace while making our economies more innovative and competitive. This is a topic that we are discussing with leaders in the European Council, in the framework of our strategic agenda that will set our priorities for the years to come, including the role of the EIB and the different EU institutions in supporting defence investment. Investing in security and defence also has a positive impact on innovation, competitiveness, and job creation, primarily through civilian use of new technologies.
Over the years, I have had the opportunity to meet some of you working at the EIB and I have seen firsthand your passion, your dedication, and your expertise. I would like to thank all of you for your work, your ambition, your service, which make our Union stronger. You build important partnerships here in Europe but also in Central Asia, in Africa and in many countries across the world. The European Union and the European Council count on you. You can count on us to work together to make our Union stronger and more sovereign.
Source – EU Council