The Impact of the War in Ukraine on the European Defence Market (IRIS) VS Building Defence Capacity in Europe: An Assessment (IISS)

Ahead of the Prague Defence Summit on November 10, 2024, the IISS published a dossier that presents a “reassessment” of the figures IRIS published in September 2023 regarding the European defence equipment market since the start of the war in Ukraine. The differences in this “reassessment” can be explained by the distinct scopes used to measure the market, as the very purpose of the respective reports differ.

The main focus of the IRIS report was to assess the impact of the war in Ukraine on the European defence market. Further to this, it aimed to evaluate whether this European defence equipment market that the EU aims to set up was evolving in a beneficial way for the EDTIB.

As a result, the IRIS report takes the European Union Member States as its measurement perimeter, rather than the European NATO countries, as is done in the IISS report. The IISS report, therefore, takes into account the United Kingdom and Norway, unlike the IRIS report. It is important to remember that IRIS’ objective was to determine whether the war in Ukraine had an impact on the European defence equipment market, taking into account the EU’s defence industrial policy goal of increasing the competitiveness of the EDTIB.

A second distinction is that the IRIS report only takes into account arms transfers between European Union countries, and not acquisitions by states from = their own national defence industry (France/France; Germany/Germany, etc.). This choice was made for two reasons:

– To understand whether or not EU countries with little or no defence industry are buying European equipment, which helps assess the state of building of the European defence equipment market and the development of the EDTIB;

– To measure the state of European cooperation on armament or cross-defence procurement between EU Member States.

It is important to note that, with 78 % of equipment purchased outside the European Union, countries with little or no defence industry currently buy most of their military equipment outside the European Union, and that European cooperation in armaments remains limited. We are therefore far from achieving strategic autonomy in terms of armament, which has a negative impact on both the competitivity of the EDTIB and EU Member States’ ability to ensure their security, a frequent point of criticism levelled at EU Member States within NATO.

In conclusion, the analyses by IRIS and the IISS are not contradictory, and the figures provided by the IRIS are not erroneous, as the IISS report suggested. The measurement perimeters are different because the two analyses have different objectives.

IRIS intends to publish an updated edition of the report « The impact of the war in Ukraine on the European defence market » in the near future, which will include two sections:

– One taking into account the acquisitions made by States to their national DTIB,

– One excluding these acquisitions.

The scope will remain limited to EU Member States, as one of the objectives of this report is to measure the impact of the European Union’s defence industrial policy on the European DTIB – an analysis that is not feasible with the scope used by the IISS.

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IRIS’ NOTE: The Impact of the War in Ukraine on the European Defence Market (by Jean-Pierre Maulny, Deputy Director of IRIS)

IISS’ NOTE: Europe’s Defence Procurement since 2022: a Reassessment (by Ben Schreer, Executive Director of IISS) 

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IRIS, a public-interest association created in 1991, is a French think tank on geopolitical and strategic issues. It is the only international think tank to have been set up as a totally private initiative in an independent approach. IRIS activities can be divided into four fields: research, organisation of events and meetings, publishing and training.