Federico Fabbrini

On 19 November 2025, the European Commission, together with the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, presented the latest plan to strengthen Europe’s defence, with a package of measures focused on military mobility. Specifically, the Commission and the High Representative released a joint communication on military mobility; the Commission also published a communication outlining a roadmap for the EU defence industry transformation, aimed at unleashing disruptive innovation for defence readiness; and it presented a proposal for a regulation—requiring joint assessment and approval by the European Parliament and the Council—establishing a framework of measures to facilitate the transport of military equipment, goods, and personnel across the Union. All of this was accompanied by bombastic press releases, visually appealing factsheets, and the inevitable annexes.

The Commission’s package is the latest attempt by EU institutions to identify a roadmap for integrating defence within the EU, especially in light of the uncertainties in transatlantic relations following Donald Trump’s re-election as president of the United States. Indeed, this roadmap follows, among other initiatives, the Re-Arm-EU plan presented by the President of the Commission in early March 2025; the defence white paper Readiness 2030, released jointly by the Commission and the High Representative also in March 2025; and another joint communication by the Commission and the High Representative called Preserving Peace –Defence Readiness Roadmap 2030, published in October 2025. All of this was, in turn, preceded—after Russia’s aggression against Ukraine—by the Strategic Compass, approved by the Council in March 2022; by the joint communication of the Commission and the High Representative on the defence investment gaps and way forward, from May 2022; and by a further joint communication, “A new European Defence Industrial Strategy: Achieving EU readiness through a responsive and resilient European Defence Industry”, from May 2024; as well as by a high-level report titled “Safer Together: A Path Towards a Fully Prepared Union”, written at the Commission’s request by former Finnish President Sauli Niinistö and published in October 2024.

For several years now, therefore, the offices of the European Commission and the European External Action Service have been producing a whirlwind of maps, roadmaps, compasses, and other documents with various names, all intended to identify a path toward strengthening Europe’s defence. Unfortunately, the impression is that Europe is getting lost among all these maps, unsure of its actual destination. Ultimately, all these initiatives—admirable as they are—share a common methodological flaw: relying on the goodwill of member states to increase the EU’s collective military capabilities, and thus its defence and deterrence. Needless to say, the Commission’s initiatives are constrained. In the EU’s current institutional setup, as defined by the treaties, defence policy is subject to special functioning rules dominated by intergovernmental institutions (the European Council), while supranational institutions (the Commission and Parliament) have very limited powers.

For this reason, the spaces where the Commission attempts to intervene are those more closely linked to the internal market, where it has greater authority. It is from this perspective that one should understand the Commission’s efforts, already underway for several years, to strengthen the European defence industry, including through the use of the EU budget to encourage joint production and procurement of ammunition, partly destined for transfer to the Ukrainian army. Likewise, the Commission’s proposal in this week’s military mobility package to improve the movement of military equipment and personnel from one EU member state to another must be read in this light: the only legally binding measure in the package is the proposed regulation aimed at creating a framework that facilitates the transport of vehicles and soldiers, based on the EU’s legal competences in the field of transport (Articles 91 and 100 TFEU). By leveraging its regulatory powers over the internal market—essentially the only real tool it has—the Commission has also proposed the creation of an emergency regime, whose activation would be triggered by the Council, under which military equipment could, in cases of necessity and urgency, move across national borders along a set of strategic corridors, in derogation from the usual rules and certifications.

Nonetheless, the use of public-relations slogans such as “military Schengen” (the defence-sector analogy to the Schengen area, which allows free movement of people among EU states) conceals a harsh truth: nearly four years after Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, and a year after Donald Trump’s re-election as U.S. president, the EU has made no real leap toward integrating its common defence. In fact, the current configuration of European defence remains essentially the same as it was conceived under the Maastricht Treaty of 1992—and progress since then has been minimal. This is a direct result of the role of the member states, which jealously guard their sovereignty in military matters (in some cases also to protect a constitutionally established principle of neutrality) and obstruct the development of a true European defence. Although such integration would be possible under Article 42 TEU, the requirement that the European Council decide unanimously, followed by national ratification procedures according to each state’s constitutional rules, has made real progress effectively impossible.

Given this, it is urgent to consider different solutions for advancing Europe’s defence—and here, ironically, the Schengen precedent invoked by the Commission and the High Representative in their recent package becomes useful. The removal of internal borders within the EU was initially achieved through an ad hoc treaty signed in the Luxembourg town of Schengen in 1985, and originally endorsed by only a few of the then-member states. Over time, the Schengen Agreement was incorporated into the EU treaties, but not all EU member states have joined the corresponding acquis (and there are non-EU countries that participate in Schengen as well). The Schengen precedent—through which some member states ceded their sovereignty over the internal security of their borders—should therefore genuinely serve as a model for defence, inspiring an agreement among states willing to cede their external sovereignty in defence matters by granting powers to a supranational body capable of exercising them. This is precisely the idea behind the European Defence Community (EDC), established by a treaty signed in 1952 by the six founding countries and which, as I have explained elsewhere, could be revived through ratification by the two countries (Italy and France) that did not ratify it at the time. The EDC, just like Schengen, would be a treaty separate from the EU, joined only by countries willing to take common defence seriously. In conclusion, maps are welcome, but having many of them without knowing the destination is of little use. Europe’s defence needs a destination, and that destination is the EDC.