Europe needs a rearmament fund

Europe’s first debt bond, the Recovery and Resilience Fund, showed what it can do if it pools resources for strategic goals. Europe now needs collective action to achieve defence capacity

A US HIMARS rocket artillery system. Hundreds are being sold to the Baltic states and Poland.

The war in Ukraine has brought a period of rearmament upon Europe. Not only do stocks of weapons sent to Ukraine need to be replenished. European countries are raising defence budgets for the first time since the end of the Cold War. Increasingly, 2% of GDP is seen as a floor rather than a ceiling.

My colleague Elisabeth Gosselin-Malo has documented some of the increases in munitions production this occasions in Romania, Czechia, Slovakia, Norway, the UK and Germany. Is it enough? Some military analysts believe Ukraine will need 1.5mn artillery shells to win this war, more artillery, and hundreds of armoured fighting vehicles and tanks.