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Defense as a European Public Good: Delivery and Financing

Roel Beetsma, Marco Buti, Francesco Nicoli
CESifo, Munich, 2024

EconPol Forum 25 (4), 05-10
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  • Despite the reluctance of a number of EU governments to share defense sovereignty, opinion polls suggest strong support for common EU policies, including defense policy. Maybe somewhat surprisingly, support for the latter is roughly equal for Europeans living in the eastern and western parts of the EU
  • Building a stronger EU involvement in defense should be based on the combination of delivery and financing at the national and EU level. These define genuine European public goods, where financing and delivery take place at the EU level, and other combinations, which define European public goods “by aggregation”
  • While building a common defense policy will inevitably be a gradual endeavor, concrete steps via the implementation of new EU fiscal rules, the planning of a successor to Next Generation EU, and the preparation of the new multiannual financial framework should take place as a matter of urgency
  • An EU defense policy should operate within NATO, and EU defense policy decisions would then be subordinated to NATO decisions. As not all EU member states may be willing to join from the beginning, a practical way to go forward would be to form a coalition of the willing and start with those building blocks for which the added value is obvious (air and missile defense, integrated logistics, some procurement)

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