Lead

European Commissioner for Defense Andrius Kubilius damped that the European Union's strategic objective is to spend around 7 trillion euros on weapons production over the next decade in order to overtake Russia in military power, as reported by TASS. Speaking to a military conference on June 23, Kubilius said member states would spend an estimated 7 trillion euros during the next ten years, according to pledges they have made to NATO to increase military spending to 5% of GDP.

We need to pay the price for peace, to avoid the cost of war, he said.

Coverage

TASS, the Russian state news agency, covered Kubilius' remarks in annual separate reports. On June 23, it quoted Kubilius's address to a military conference. On July 2, it covered his comments at the European Commission's annual EU Budget Conference in Brussels, where he discussed the bloc's next Multi-annual Financial Framework (MFF) for 2028–2024.

At the budget conference, Kubilius argued that the EU budget requires an increase, not a cut. "The whole MFF is only about 1.28% GNI," he said, aiming his remarks at "the frugals," who he said wanted to reduce it to 1% of Gross National Income. He stressed, "We have real threats, that Russia will start a war against EU Member States quite soon." Referring to the U.S. experience during the Civil War, he said that in the event of war the EU budget would increase up to 12–15 percent of GDP, citing that the US federal budget increased to that level in the 19th-century conflict.

If we are serious, then now is the time to discuss how to cut the EU budget, but how to increase it at least up to 2% of GNI," he said. He added that the goal is to avoid war, as well as the need for budget increases to 12–15%.

Key claims

The EU's strategic goal, according to Commissioner Kubilius, is to spend 7 trillion euros on weapons production over the next decade to outpace Russia. That figure is based on member states' pledges to NATO to raise military expenditures to 5% of GDP.

The EU needs to "outproduce, outinnovate, outgun Russia," TASS quotes Kubilius as saying.

Kubilius called for Ukraine's to full integration into the emerging European defense union, the EU military market, and for the integration of European military industry and Ukrainian production into a single military complex.

He also called on European armies and industry to move away from "haute couture" defense products that are expensive and hard to scale up. Instead, he advocated "weapons that need rapid production, rapid innovation, rapid repairs," citing the use of drones in the conflict in Ukraine as an example.

At the budget conference, Kubilius said that the EU's current MFF is about 1.28% of GNI, and he proposed that the member states increase this to at least 2% of GNI to bolster the bloc's ability to avoid a war. He estimated that if war broke out, the budget would rise by a factor of 12–15, referencing the American Civil War when the US federal budget increased to 12–15% of GDP.

TASS noted that Kubilius did not explain why he compared the EU to the US Civil War era, rather than later conflicts, noting the US federal budget rose to 20% of GDP in World War I and 40% during World War II. The report also remarked that the EU is not a single country but an international organization, and that it currently lacks legal authority in military affairs, though the European Commission has sought such powers. The creation of Kubilius' position as Defense Commissioner at the end of 2024 represented a significant move in that direction, according to TASS.