Deutschland effizienter verteidigen: Mit welchen Partnern?

Germany’s rapidly rising defence spending would be put to more efficient use if defence equipment were standardised more widely across Europe. An EU-wide solution currently seems unrealistic. Agreements on individual products remain important, but are limited in scope. An interim solution could be close cooperation between a number of countries to standardise the procurement and production of defence equipment. This requires a willingness to incur high defence expenditure, and to relinquish a certain degree of national sovereignty. Various indicators suggest that this willingness is most likely to be found in Northern European countries and the Netherlands. The efficiency gains for Germany alone could amount to several billion euros annually.