Waking EU’s defece from its deep slumber | By Noor Ostyn, European volunteer at MEBA
This year – 2024 – started with increasingly worrying messaging from military leaders across Europe. As the conflicts around the world – closer and closer to the European Union’s borders – intensify, it becomes clear that Europe has been enjoying their era of relative peace in ways that diminished their military responsive power. Whilst the limiting of military spending in the last decades freed up budget for European countries to invest in other sectors, it has left several member states and their armies understaffed, malequipped and underfunded. Additionally, ambivalence arises concerning the support of major military powers like the United States, as many European member states fail to meet the military spending quota, as proposed by NATO (2% of the countries GDP). All this considered, the European Union is left with a defence system that suffers several major issues; a lack of money, a diminished reactive capacity by the European defence firms, weak military cooperation between the member states, and difficulties regarding military recruitment.