Why Europe needs a defence union and why Ukraine should be part of it
American withdrawal demands effective replacement of their strategic enablers on European continent. German experts just recently calculated that it will cost around 500 billion euro for Europeans to build those strategic enablers and to replace American ones now located on the European continent.
The European Union needs major changes in its policies and practices in the field of defence.
The outlines of a new European security architecture and Ukraine’s place in it were presented by EU Commissioner for Defence and Space Andrius Kubilius during an event at the V. Martens Centre: Europe's new security architecture: Ukraine as a strategic pillar of the continent's sefence future. We summarised his speech in the column: Defending together with Ukraine: what the EU must do and why it benefits Kyiv.
We can just agree with some recent big statements. For example, Marco Rubio, who said that Ukraine has the strongest army in Europe.
That was repeated by Alex Stubb. He even said that the Ukrainian army may be the best in the world.
I don't know if the Americans will agree, but that was a good statement.
And it should speak to us: if we have on the European continent the strongest army right in our neighbourhood, that should make it very clear that integration of Ukrainian defence capabilities with European defence should be in the strongest vital interest of Europe.
Now, Ukraine has the strongest army, not only because they have the bravest soldiers and the smartest generals, but also because Ukraine has the strongest innovative defence industry. And so Europe should have also the strongest vital interest to integrate that innovative defence industry with the European defence industry.
This is the very clear condition why we need a European defence architecture with possibility for Ukraine to integrate institutionally now, not tomorrow.
That is why we need what we call European Defence Union.
In my view, Ukraine, but also the United Kingdom, Norway, maybe Turkey, maybe even Canada, would be able to join European Union Member States in this established European Defence Union. The European Defence Union should be established voluntarily amongst the member states, amongst the countries, which want much stronger cooperation in defence, much more unity in defence, which now is not available.
European Defence Union from the legal or constitutional point of view can be created in different ways, perhaps. Because all other attempts to find in EU treaties some kind of enhanced cooperation articles and so on, first of all, would leave some countries which are not members of the EU in some kind of unknown territory.
I can repeat very briefly why we need a European Defence Union, not only for Ukraine, despite the fact that I said mainly for Ukraine, but we can see a lot of benefits also for internal developments of the European continent in defence.
So in my view, First of all, a European Defence Union could be a very strong platform for more unity, for more effective decision making and for collective leadership.
That is why, a European Defence Union can be effective instrumentally to create a leadership body, a European Security Council. It could be a smaller arrangement among big member states, that have power militarily, but also several rotational member states and then institutions in order to have an effective platform.
Ukrainian membership in a European Defence Union would be the major stepping stone towards full membership in the European Union.
Through this integration into a European Defence Union, we really can create among Europeans, a clear understanding of the vital interest of Europe in having Ukraine inside Europe. I'm afraid that for the time being, there is a shortage of that understanding.
European Defence Union from the legal or constitutional point of view can be created in different ways, perhaps. The most effective way would be to look into the possibility of a new intergovernmental treaty.
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23 of June 2026
