ARMING EUROPE — AND ABANDONING IT

The European Union was born from the trauma of war — to become its antidote. It expanded under the promise of peace, solidarity, and the rule of law: pillars that granted it, for decades, a moral authority unmatched in the global order. Today, that edifice trembles. The continent that once replaced trenches with treaties now rehearses a return to the language of war — not as an act of courage, but as an act of flight: flight from the idea of Europe, from political imagination, and from itself.

While the EU’s largest economies — Germany, France, and Italy — stagnate, growing less than the so-called Asian tigers and even less than war-torn, heavily sanctioned Russia, one would expect a bold European investment in productivity, innovation, and social cohesion. That would be the rational response. But it is not what is happening. Instead, EU leaders are doubling down on defence budgets, fuelling the arms industry, and embracing a military race that is economically reckless, strategically sterile, and morally corrosive.

Portugal illustrates this inversion with brutal clarity. Meeting the 2% of GDP target would mean doubling current defence spending — from roughly €3 billion to over €6.4 billion per year. A 3% goal, now discussed by some, would push the cost even further. That money could fund national housing programmes, build hundreds of schools, modernise hospitals, and ease the tax burden on younger generations. As Vital Moreira sharply put it, there are no “free cannons.” And as Janan Ganesh warned, “Europe must trim its welfare state to build a warfare state.” Military spending carries direct social costs — and its victims are not abstract: they are our public services, our communities, and the very foundations of Europe’s post-war social contract.

To bypass fiscal constraints, some leaders now propose excluding defence expenditures from deficit calculations, or even issuing joint military debt. But both suggestions raise grave legal and political concerns. The first — a budgetary distortion — would not alter the debt ratio, which remains the Maastricht benchmark for fiscal governance. The second — a mutualisation of military debt — is not foreseen in the Treaties and stands in direct tension with Article 311 of the TFEU, which anchors EU revenues in the principle of budgetary legality. Worse still, it would demand a structural reshuffling of the EU’s budget: cohesion policy and the Common Agricultural Policy would be the first victims. The cost of rearmament would be paid with the pillars of the Union itself. This is not fiscal realism. It is political abdication. The rhetorical lever behind this escalation — the so-called “Russian threat” — has become less of a strategic necessity than a political reflex. Recognising the genuine fears of eastern Member States does not justify a wholesale inversion of European priorities. Even excluding the US and Canada, European NATO countries already outspend Russia and field more troops — despite Moscow being at war. If deterrence is already achievable, why the rush to rearm? The answer lies not in security logic, but in ideological drift. This is not civic mobilisation. It is emotional manipulation. The momentum behind militarisation does not rise from citizens. It descends from above — from fear-driven politics and a defence industry addicted to billion-euro contracts. From Berlin to Lisbon, leaders repeat that Europe must “rise to the historic moment.” But few seem to grasp what that truly entails. Rising to the occasion does not mean emulating the confrontational logic that devastated the continent in the 20th century. It means transcending it. It means resisting the shortcut from fear to force. By mortgaging public investment, the welfare state, and intergenerational equity, Europe’s leaders are not protecting the European project — they are hollowing it out.

Younger Europeans, in particular, will bear the consequences. For us, the promise of Europe was never tanks, but trust. Not escalation, but solidarity. Not fortress thinking, but a shared democratic future. If the Union continues down this path, it will need no external enemies to unravel — it will collapse from within. Not due to military weakness, but from the erosion of moral legitimacy, social cohesion, and founding memory.

No civilisation survives by divesting from what once made it worth defending. Europe cannot arm its way back to cohesion. It is grounded in trust between generations, in distributive justice, and in a democracy unafraid to face itself. The existential threat to Europe is not gathering at its borders — it lies in its growing inability to remember who it is, and in the shrinking political courage to remain so.

Europe still has a choice. It can confront its challenges without betraying its essence. It can invest in green transitions, digital innovation, and youth opportunity instead of exporting fear. And it can remember that resilience does not come from copying the logics of the past — but from reimagining what kind of power it wants to be. This is the historic moment. The question is not whether Europe will arm itself. The question is: will it still recognise itself once it does?