Steven Blockmans
Senior Research Fellow, CEPS
Europe is facing a twofold threat: Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine and Donald Trump’s ‘flood the zone strategy’ comprised of a relentless onslaught of sometimes contradictory policy announcements. As a result, Europe’s vulnerability to Putin’s neo-imperialist agenda has been worsened by the erosion of American security guarantees. In response, EU member states, in particular those allied to NATO, have committed to dramatically increase their defence spending.
Guiding the EU’s rearmament is a roadmap for defence industrial capacity-building: the White Paper for European Defence Readiness 2030 of 19 March 2025. In it, the EU promotes an “open architecture combined with variable geometry” to enhance the Europe’s security order. This caters not just for individual member states to join a coalition of the willing to provide forward defence in Ukraine, which is a precondition for the EU’s own security. It is much more an invitation to like-minded countries to strike up defence partnerships with the EU and serve mutual strategic interests. The condition for accelerated defence industrial integration into the Single Market and access to the new defence funds is that partner countries share the same strategic outlook as the EU. As the EU re-arms, candidate countries are therefore expected to bite the bullet and show that they’re on the same side, i.e. with the EU and against Russia.
Porcupine Strategy
Central to the EU’s White Paper is a ‘porcupine strategy’ for Ukraine to defend itself and deter Russia – also from attacking EU member states. The surest way of quickly filling critical gaps is indeed to link Ukraine to EU initiatives to develop defence capabilities and integrate the respective industries. Accelerating the candidate country’s defence industrial integration isn’t just Brussels’ geostrategic response to Russia’s war of aggression. It also serves the EU’s self-enlightened interest:
“Ukraine has become the world’s leading defence and technology innovation laboratory. Closer cooperation between the Ukrainian and European defence industries will enable first-hand knowledge transfer on how to best use innovation to achieve military superiority on the battlefield, including on rapidly scaling up production and updating existing capabilities” (White Paper, 2025, p. 12).
The Commission and High Representative are not shy in stating that Ukraine and all EU member states need the capabilities required to conduct the “entire spectrum of military tasks”, ranging from providing a minimum of two million rounds of large-calibre artillery ammunition, air-defence systems, missiles and drones to key enablers like space-based assets and services to replace American capacities for intelligence-sharing, surveillance, and reconnaissance.
The White Paper does not deal in hyperbole. It offers realistic suggestions on how to enhance defence readiness by working through the EU institutions. Indeed, the EU is uniquely placed to harmonise standards, stimulate joint production and facilitate joint procurement. Adding up all the elements of the White Paper’s shopping list of military capabilities amounts to the creation of—all but in name—a strategically autonomous European defence industrial pillar within NATO. Gone are the days of worrying about duplicating capabilities with those on the other side of the Atlantic.
Contrary to the Trump administration’s isolationist agenda and untrustworthiness towards its neighbours, friends, and allies, the EU is, as said, promoting an “open architecture combined with variable geometry” to enhance Europe’s security order. The White Paper implicitly encourages like-minded states which do not (yet) have a security and defence partnership with the EU (cf. the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and India) to agree one quickly, lest their companies miss out on the fresh subsidies that the EU plans to dole out.
Alignment with the CFSP
The condition for accelerated defence integration and access to the growing reservoir of EU funding destined for the rearmament of Europe is that partner and candidate countries share the same strategic outlook as the EU. As such, the enlargement policy is being infused with a big dose of geopolitical interest promotion by the EU, putting a prime on alignment by candidate countries to the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP).
In their White Paper, the Commission and High Representative demand strategic clarity from candidate countries: those which currently don’t fully align with the CFSP, i.e. Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Georgia, are intentionally left out of the list of countries that would be eligible to apply for funding under ‘SAFE’, the EU’s brand-new EUR 150bn loan instrument for defence (Council Regulation (EU) 2025/1106).
The fact that eligibility has little to do with democratic backsliding is revealed by the inclusion in the list of an increasingly autocratic Turkey, which is deemed key to the European coalition of the able and willing to police a future ceasefire agreement between Russia and Ukraine. For legal entities owned or controlled by third states that are considered eligible, the SAFE Regulation nevertheless adds the condition that “appropriate mitigation measures” or “guarantees shall provide assurances that the involvement of the contractor or subcontractor in the common procurement does not contravene the security and defence interests of the Union and its Member States as established in the framework of the [CFSP]”. Such guarantees will have to ensure that the (sub)contractor is not subjected to third state control “that restrains or restricts its ability to fulfil the order and to deliver results” and that “access by a third country or by a third-country entity to classified information relating to the common procurement is prevented”. These conditions are reminiscent of the eligibility criteria for third country participation in the EU’s PESCO projects (Council Decision (CFSP) 2020/1639).
More broadly, alignment with the CFSP is being frontloaded in the application of EU pre-accession conditionality. This follows the declaration by the General Affairs Council that “[e]nlargement is a geo-strategic investment in peace, security, stability and prosperity” (Council of the European Union, 2024).
Georgia is a clear-cut case. Even if the European Council in October 2024 concluded that Georgia had de facto paused its pre-accession process by reneging on the fundamental values and principles that unwrite EU membership, there is currently no way for the Georgian Dream government to resuscitate the country’s candidacy without openly and unreservedly, in words and deeds, turning away from Russia and aligning with the EU (cf. Council of the European Union 2024, para. 4). Conversely, the EU can no longer expect candidate countries to make such choices without providing the security guarantees needed to deter a Russian military backlash.
Even Serbia—which is considered by many European governments as key to regional stability in the Western Balkans, which buys French Rafale fighter jets, and which holds some geoeconomic sway over EU in terms of providing access to lithium mines to boost the battery industry—is blocked from progressing in its membership negotiations (Emerson and Blockmans, 2025). The opening of substantive talks on Cluster 3 (competitiveness) has been effectively delayed for more than three years, despite the European Commission’s assessment that Serbia is aligned on the technical standards of it.
The Council has demanded that Serbia first make “substantial further progress (…), in particular in accordance with the areas mentioned in paragraph 29 and in line with the negotiating framework, compared to the assessment set out in the 2024 enlargement report” (Council of the European Union, 2024). Paragraph 29 of the document stresses that “Serbia’s progress on the rule of law and the normalisation of relations with Kosovo will continue to determine the overall pace of accession negotiations” (italics added).
As such, progressive alignment with the EU’s foreign and security affairs is elevated to be on a par, and even a precondition to, the ‘fundamentals’ for membership. Such a reading chimes with the Commission’s insistence that Serbia “improve, as a matter of priority, its alignment with EU common foreign and security policy (CFSP), including restrictive measures, and avoid actions and statements that go against EU foreign policy positions” (European Commission, Serbia Report, 2024).
In today’s security environment, the EU is closing options for candidate countries to remain non-aligned by running a multi-vector foreign and security policy.
This commentary is drawn from a longer policy brief published by GIP in May.
