EU SAFE

The EU is launching a new mechanism aimed at supporting the European defense industry. Support for joint procurement and new financial opportunities can help in the expansion of the arms industry and innovative solutions.

How will the countries of Central Europe use the new opportunities, how will Slovakia get involved? Can arms production be a substitute for expected decline in automobile production? All of this remains to be seen.

What we already know, however, is that real long-term benefits for EU countries  come mainly from investments in technological innovations, especially in the sector of so-called dual-use technologies. In our opinion, this is where governments should focus their efforts to effectively use both – existing support mechanisms and new opportunities brought by EU SAFE.

What is EU SAFE, what are the basic mechanisms of operation and the goals of the initiative, writes Jakub Gazda for ICE.

Martin Fedor

 

The European Council adopts the SAFE mechanism

 

On May 27, 2025, a key section of the “Readiness 2030 Plan” came into effect. SAFE, or “Security Action for Europe,” has been heralded as a key component on the path to increasing European strategic autonomy. Allowing member states and close partners of the Union to offset the significant costs associated with procuring defence systems while boosting the production and innovation capacity of Europe’s native defence industry.

In the sections below, this article explains the technical aspects of the SAFE mechanism, its potential future benefits for European security, as well as the reaction and potential consequences it may cause by excluding Europe’s largest arms supplier, the United States.

 

SAFE and how it operates

Primary goals: As mentioned earlier, the SAFE mechanism is designed as an intrinsic part of the Commission’s Readiness 2030 white paper. Its chief aim is to boost European defence production capabilities while decreasing costs for end-user countries by utilising common procurement incentivised by 150 billion euros of financial support from the EU.

Who can participate: The Readiness 2030 plan identifies security challenges as a Europe-wide phenomenon, and the SAFE mechanism does as well. Therefore, it promotes pan-European cooperation in defence procurement by involving a wide array of states. These include member states, Ukraine, states part of the European Economic Area and the European Free Trade Association, acceding countries, candidate countries, potential candidates, and countries that have signed Security and Defence Partnerships with the EU (the latest being the United Kingdom).

With 43 states meeting the eligibility criteria.

What can SAFE be used on: On March 6 2025, the European Commission identified priority areas of Europe’s defence which need reinforcement, subsequently dividing them into two categories based on immediate necessity and conditions of eligibility, serving as the guidelines for what type of equipment states may pursue through SAFE, with the equipment eligible for the SAFE mechanism ranging from soldier equipment and infantry weapons to air and missile defence systems (the complete list can be accessed here).

Furthermore, apart from the equipment above, a key criterion for utilising the SAFE mechanism, and one which has caused the most pushback from the United States, is the origin criterion. This requires that, at a minimum, 65% of the value of the acquired weapon system must be made in an EU member state, Ukraine or an EEC/AFTA country to be eligible for SAFE funding.

Application: States procuring defence equipment are encouraged to do so in conjunction with one or more eligible states to secure financial assistance in the form of long-term loans from the European Commission and offset the financial strain such procurement would otherwise pose.

 

What can we expect from SAFE when it’s implemented?

The mechanism, which comes into force on May 29, 2025, is an ambitious roadmap to both boost European defence manufacturing and decrease the cost for the militaries of EU member states and their allies.

If all goes well, the European continent may experience a renaissance in its native defence production, which, while on a high technological level, has been hindered by the influence and scale of defence contractors from across the Atlantic which have successfully established themselves as the “go to”  suppliers of complex defence systems, leaving European companies to fill in pockets un-served by American contractors rather than being the primary suppliers.

Furthermore, as lessons from the past have taught us, it is the defence sector that has driven cutting-edge, irreplaceable innovations used by civilians daily, such as the Internet and GPS, as well as less obvious examples like nylon and the digital camera. Therefore, by making the use of the local defence industry an indivisible criterion, the European Commission has either intentionally or unintentionally facilitated a vehicle for unprecedented dual-use innovation, which has the potential to benefit Europe both strategically and improve the lives of its citizens.

Nonetheless, before being too optimistic about the renaissance of Europe’s arms industry, it is necessary to acknowledge the head start both competitors from across the Atlantic and rivals to the east have had. The military-industrial complex of the United States has, for the better part of three decades, been the dominant leader in the innovation and production of modern weapon systems, essentially supplementing the decline of European defence expenditure and innovation since the end of the Cold War. On the other hand, the People’s Republic of China has, in the last two decades, risen from an importer of defensive technologies into a producer of systems on par with those of the United States, while Russia has lost the ability to produce highly complex systems due to the sanction regime, has shown a commendable ability to adapt to its new reality and produce lethal battle-tested systems that can take on weapons systems operated by Ukraine.

Therefore, while Europe and its close partners should achieve strategic autonomy in defence production, it is necessary to acknowledge that it is going to be a protracted process during which it is critical that cooperation and knowledge transfer continue to take place with our closest ally for the European defence sector to remain up to date with the latest technology and eventually even overtake them.