Generolo Jono Žemaičio Lietuvos karo akademija

This paper critically analyses the escalating security challenges facing the European Union, primarily defined by the Russian Federation's military aggression against Ukraine after 2022 and the return of great power tensions. This transformation of the security environment has definitively ended the era of post-conflict peace on the European continent and exposed deep structural vulnerabilities in assuring sovereign European defence. The analysis identifies three key structural challenges: the critical fragmentation of Member States' defence capabilities and capacities, the limited ability to respond to high-intensity conflict, and the industrial unpreparedness of the European Defence Technological and Industrial Base. It is asserted that the EU’s persistent reliance on external guarantees, particularly amid rising transatlantic uncertainty, jeopardises its political sovereignty. To overcome these structural limitations, the paper advocates for a deeper integration trajectory towards the concept of a Total Defence Union. It posits that strengthening European defence is a strategic imperative for maintaining Europe's stability and international standing in an era of increasing great power rivalry.

This article analyses the challenges and perspectives of the European Union's security and defence policy in a new geopolitical era shaped by Russian aggression against Ukraine, growing US-China rivalry, and instability in the EU's neighbourhood. It identifies three key weaknesses that limit the Union's strategic autonomy: insufficient military capabilities, the fragmentation of the defence industry, and a reliance on external suppliers of weapons, equipment, and critical raw materials. Drawing on an interdisciplinary framework that combines political economy, political science, European studies, and security studies, the article examines how existing tools and initiatives, the EDF, PESCO, ASAP, EDIRPA, and the ReArm Europe plan, are responding to these deficits. While these instruments and initiatives demonstrate the EU's ambition to strengthen its security role, their effectiveness remains limited by political divergences and restricted resources. The author concludes that overcoming fragmentation and building sustainable mechanisms for defence cooperation are essential if the EU is to establish itself as a credible security actor in a multipolar world.

This paper explores the potentialities and constraints of building the European Union's strategic autonomy in a new geopolitical era marked by the rivalry between the United States and China, the weakening of the multilateral order, and the consequences of the war in Ukraine. The authors primarily focus on the political, economic, and technological dimensions of autonomy, utilising relevant scientific methods within an interdisciplinary research framework, primarily the analytical-synthetic method, content and comparative analysis, as well as the scenario approach. The findings indicate that the EU is capable of progressively reducing its dependency through the diversification of resources, investments in development, research, and innovation, and the strengthening of digital and technological sovereignty. Simultaneously, however, the Union faces serious limitations, the fiscal constraints of the Member States, the fragmentation of its foreign and security policy, and a persistent reliance on the United States in the area of defence. The EU’s future position will therefore hinge on its ability to consolidate its economic and technological potential and transform it into a unified political will and a credible geopolitical power.

Ensuring the defence of freedom, independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity, and population belongs to the main tasks of each state. Therefore, countries, in response to the current political, security and economic situation, must earmark, within the framework of their national budgets, a proportion of the available resources to ensure their defence. The aim of the article, based on current trends in the defence budgets of the European Union member states, is point out that not only the global economic and financial crisis and the credit and debt crisis in the euro area have a significant negative impact on the amount of resources, which individual European Union member states earmark to ensure their defence.