Subscribe
For years, the European debate has treated national sovereignty and European integration as if they were necessarily opposing forces. Italy’s latest decision on defence suggests that this distinction is becoming increasingly obsolete. On August 26, Giorgia Meloni’s government formally requested €8 billion from SAFE, the European Union’s €150 billion Security Action for Europe programme. Italy is eligible for as much as €14.9 billion, but Rome has chosen, at least for now, to request a smaller amount. Defence Minister Guido Crosetto has supported the use of the instrument, pointing in particular to the financial advantages of borrowing through the European mechanism.
The decision has produced disagreement within the governing coalition. Matteo Salvini’s League has been considerably more sceptical about increasing military expenditure and using European financing for that purpose. The disagreement reflects a broader question that the European right can no longer avoid: does using a common European instrument weaken national sovereignty? In this case, the opposite argument is more convincing.
SAFE does not create a European army controlled by the Commission. It provides up to €150 billion in loans to member states to accelerate defence investment, particularly through common procurement. The programme was created precisely because Europe’s defence problem is not only how much it spends, but how inefficiently it spends it. Twenty-seven national armies buying similar weapons through fragmented procurement systems do not automatically produce twenty-seven sovereign defence capabilities. They can instead produce duplication, higher costs, incompatible systems and dependence on foreign suppliers. Sovereignty cannot be measured simply by whether money is borrowed in Rome or through a European instrument. It should be measured by the capacity to act.
If European financing allows Italy to obtain capital on better terms, strengthen its armed forces, support European defence production and participate in larger procurement programmes, using that instrument can increase Italy’s effective sovereignty rather than reduce it. This distinction is becoming more important because the strategic environment has changed radically. At the 2025 NATO summit in The Hague, allies committed to investing 5 per cent of GDP in defence and defence-related security by 2035: at least 3.5 per cent for core military requirements and up to another 1.5 per cent for areas including infrastructure, resilience, cybersecurity and the defence industrial base. At the same time, Washington is making its expectations increasingly explicit.
On August 27, US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby told NATO ambassadors that the United States wants the defence of Europe to become increasingly European-led. The Pentagon is currently reviewing its military presence on the continent, where approximately 80,000 American troops remain deployed. Europe should take the message seriously.
The transatlantic alliance remains essential to European security. There is no strategic advantage in replacing NATO with an artificial competition between Europe and the United States. But Atlanticism cannot mean expecting American taxpayers and soldiers indefinitely to assume responsibilities that Europeans refuse to assume themselves. An alliance is stronger when both sides are capable. And this is where the Italian decision matters beyond its €8 billion value. Meloni’s approach acknowledges a reality that traditional sovereigntist rhetoric sometimes struggles to accept: there are forms of sovereignty that European nations can preserve only by exercising them together. Defence is increasingly one of them.
Italy has around 59 million inhabitants. Germany has around 84 million. France around 68 million. Even the largest European economies operate on a completely different scale from the United States and China. Russia, meanwhile, has reorganised large parts of its economy around military production as its war against Ukraine continues. It is unrealistic to believe that Europe can confront this environment through twenty-seven entirely independent defence policies.
Common procurement, compatible weapons systems, integrated air and missile defence, shared investment in satellites and cybersecurity, coordinated military mobility and a stronger European defence industrial base are no longer federalist fantasies. They are practical requirements. The question is not whether Europe needs a common defence dimension. It does. The legitimate argument concerns how it should be structured. A stronger European defence must not become an excuse to transfer every strategic decision to an unaccountable bureaucracy in Brussels. National governments must remain responsible for their armed forces, constitutional constraints and decisions over the deployment of troops. Democratic legitimacy still rests primarily with the nations. But preserving national political control is entirely compatible with building common European capabilities. Indeed, without those capabilities, national control risks becoming increasingly theoretical.
A country can proudly retain the formal right to decide how to defend itself. But if it lacks ammunition, satellites, air defence, industrial capacity or access to strategically important technologies, that formal independence offers limited protection. This is why the position taken by Meloni and Crosetto is more realistic than the instinctive rejection of every European defence initiative as a surrender of sovereignty. There are legitimate concerns about costs. Italy has one of the highest public-debt ratios in Europe, and defence spending cannot become a blank cheque. SAFE loans remain debt, not free money. Every procurement decision must therefore be judged on military utility, industrial returns and financial sustainability. But refusing to invest also has a cost.
Crosetto has repeatedly stressed that security is now directly connected to industrial capacity, technological development, energy, supply chains and economic competitiveness. In June, he warned that falling behind in defence also means risking falling behind in industry, technology and the economy. That is the deeper issue. Europe has spent decades becoming an economic giant while remaining strategically dependent on others. That model was sustainable in a world where American protection appeared permanent, Russia supplied cheap energy and China was primarily a commercial opportunity. That world has disappeared.
The choice now is not between national sovereignty and Europe. It is between building enough European strength to preserve the sovereignty of its nations and watching those nations become progressively less relevant in a world dominated by continental powers. The United States, China and Russia do not organise their strategic power at the scale of Italy, France or Poland. Europe cannot expect to compete at that scale either. The architecture of a common defence can and should be debated. Its democratic control must be protected. National interests must remain represented. Waste, duplication and bureaucratic centralisation must be resisted. But the fundamental question has already been answered by reality. Without a more united Europe in defence, Europeans will not become more sovereign. They will become more dependent — and increasingly irrelevant.