The study’s authors from the Bruegel think tank in Belgium and the Kiel Institute for the World Economy in Germany said this would require spending the equivalent of 1.5 percent of the EU’s GDP to mobilize 300,000 more soldiers.
The study said the EU would need 50 additional army brigades, 1,400 tanks, 2,000 infantry fighting vehicles, and 700 artillery pieces to prevent a rapid Russian breakthrough in the Baltics.
“This is more combat power than currently exists in the French, German, Italian, and British land forces combined,” according to the study. Europe would also have to produce about 2,000 long-range drones every year.
“German leadership and commitment will be critical,” the study’s authors said.
“Germany would have to ... increase German national defense spending from 80 billion [euros] to 140 billion [euros], or approximately 3.5 percent of GDP, to be topped up with joint EU funding.”
The authors proposed that defense spending by EU member countries should increase from the current 2 percent to between 3.5 percent and 4 percent of GDP. Half of this could be financed by common European debt and used for joint procurement, they said.
Guntram Wolff, co-author of the study, said in a statement: “In economic terms, this is manageable. ... That is far less than had to be mobilized to overcome the crisis during the COVID pandemic, for example.”
The study found that Moscow had significantly increased its military capacities since the Ukraine war began in February 2022.
It said that Russia had 700,000 soldiers in Ukraine by the end of 2024 and has significantly increased its production of tanks and armored vehicles.
U.S. President Donald Trump has been urging NATO member nations to spend more on defense.
On Feb. 20, Trump’s national security adviser Mike Waltz gave all NATO members a June deadline to fully meet the defense spending target of 2 percent.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, speaking at the WEF last month, said: “If Ukraine loses then to restore the deterrence of the rest of NATO again, it will be a much, much higher price than what we are contemplating at this moment in terms of ramping up our spending and ramping up our industrial production. It will not be billions extra; it will be trillions extra.”
In 2014, NATO members set a target for all members to spend at least 2 percent of their GDP on their militaries by 2024. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 increased spending pressure on the alliance.
According to provisional NATO estimates for 2024, published in June 2024, 23 of the 31 NATO members had met the 2 percent target.
She said Europe was in conflict with “rogue” Russia over Ukraine and a “bold approach” was needed.
“If you borrow the money, that will quadruple everybody’s interest rates,” he said. “So everyone will pay for it that way, or you put taxes up to pay for it as well. So it’s a massively unpopular thing to do that across Europe.”
