For three years now, the European Union, created to promote peace and understanding, has been undergoing a profound pivot to militarisation and hard power. Europeans are served up a relentless narrative about their continent’s duty to stand up to external challenges: Russian assertiveness, the US retreat from Nato and traditional Euro-Atlantic structures and China’s rise as a geopolitical force. But this narrative has served to legitimise a militarising agenda that, away from the spotlight, is being set and pushed by defence industry interests and their political cheerleaders.

Countries in Scandinavia and central and eastern Europe, including the Baltic states, Poland, Romania, Finland and Sweden, have all increased military expenditure as part of this creep towards arming and organising for potential use of lethal force. Major western European countries have kept the annual military spending-to-GDP ratio stable, but at least four are consistently among the biggest military spenders in the world. Last year, France spent €57.2bn (£48bn), Germany €44.4bn, Italy €25bn and Spain €16bn. In the UK, defence spending topped €50bn. As a comparison, Russia, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute database, spent €55bn. The vast sums being devoted to maintain and build up the military capacity of individual EU countries come at a time when, with Brexit and the rise of nationalism in former iron curtain countries, the EU itself has never appeared so weak.

Indeed, it was in answer to this perceived weakness that the outgoing European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, in November 2016 presented his European defence action plan, the centrepiece of which was the reinvigoration of the EU’s defence industry. As a result of this process, which has in effect been hijacked by defence industry lobbyists, a European defence fund (EDF) and a financial mechanism called the European peace facility were established. The first is intended to finance research and development, the second EU defence operations. The net cost to the EU budget comes close to €25bn, while the EDF could be complemented with tens of billions more from member governments.

France has been at the forefront of promoting a European defence union

The militarisation dynamic has spilled over into other policy sectors, including development aid and border control. An integrated border management fund and an internal security fund will make more billions available for national police and border guards, forces that look increasingly militarised. Frontex, the EU’s border and coastguard agency, which contributes to policing the Mediterranean for unwanted migrants, is turning into a €10bn super-agency. It is developing a 10,000-person standing corps and investing billions in infrastructure and hardware produced by military and hi-tech corporations, including drones and surveillance technology. The era of a Europe that led by example is coming to an end, replaced by hard power.

The EU deserves criticism for not making enough of this process transparent and accountable. The names of the experts advising the commission on which projects the EDF should finance should be public and the European parliament should not have voted away its right of oversight. Still, it would be a mistake to make Brussels the scapegoat. It is the competing national priorities of EU governments that are pushing the EU towards this militarisation.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ato’s secretary general Jens Stoltenberg, boasted that Europe and Canada had increased military spending by $130bn over the past five years.’ Photograph: Xinhua/Barcroft Media

France, which has the most aggressive arms export policy in Europe, has been at the forefront of promoting a European defence union. Not only has President Macron pushed this goal fervently since he came to power, he has also fought hard to keep a French hold over the commission’s internal market portfolio, which includes defence investments. Appointing Thierry Breton to the incoming five-year commission when European countries are increasing defence spending to match the 2% Nato target, Donald Trump’s favourite attack line against Europeans, was a coup for France. But Breton is a former CEO of Atos – a multinational with interests in the aerospace industry, among other sectors – whose appointment potentially creates a conflict of interest.

Last summer, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, Germany’s defence minister and chair of the ruling CDU party, proposed that Germany meet its Nato spending pledge by 2024. Germany spends 1.2% of GDP on defence and such an increase would contribute an extra €30bn. There are indications, too, that Spain, Italy and the UK will also sign up to the coming intra-European arms race.

At Nato’s 70th anniversary celebrations last week, its secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, boasted that Europe and Canada had increased military spending by $130bn over the past five years; by 2024 the estimate is it will reach $400bn.

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This arms race mentality is now being imbibed by some of most powerful people in Europe. In the Bundestag Angela Merkel recently urged parliamentarians to rethink Germany’s restrictive arms export policy to the Sahel. “We cannot train people who have to fight terrorists only to say it’s up to them to see where they get their weapons,” she argued, warning that Russia, China and Saudi Arabia would fill the gap. The bigger picture is that she cannot know where arms sold by the European defence industry will end up.

What is so worrying is that, even as spending is loosened and politicians who understand how the defence industry’s needs can be aligned with EU policy reach positions of power, few safeguards are being put in place. Scant or no public discussion has taken place and there is no oversight built into the new structures.

EU member states have enthusiastically supported this militarisation policy but refused any discussion of arms export policy. This is the elephant in the room; half of the world’s leading exporters of arms are EU states. They contribute to political destabilisation in regions such as the Middle East, north Africa and the Sahel, as well as the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people. This is where Europe’s conversation needs to start. If the EU’s defence policy is being used to advance the needs of big producer countries and their industries it needs to tighten its regulations on the licensing and monitoring of arms exports and their enforcement.

This is an issue around which a progressive coalition aiming to challenge the hard power narrative can form. It’s a starting point for a discussion three years overdue.

• Apostolis Fotiadis is a journalist based in Athens