Europe’s approval of the first-ever European Defence Industry Programme (EDIP) is being sold as a turning point — and it should be. For decades, defence industrial policy in Europe has been fragmented, slow and strategically incoherent. EDIP marks the first attempt to correct that: a €1.5 billion framework to strengthen joint procurement, co-finance new manufacturing, and push Europe toward a more sovereign defence supply chain.
But let’s be absolutely clear: Europe does not have the luxury of treating EDIP as another well-intentioned administrative upgrade. Ukraine’s battlefield reality – and Russia’s deliberate targeting of civilians and infrastructure – demands a pace and scale that Europe has not yet demonstrated.
In recent weeks, Russia launched one of the largest air assaults of the war – more than 460 drones and 22 missiles in a single night, killing civilians and knocking out electricity and heating across Kyiv and multiple regions. A separate barrage on Ternopil killed at least 26 people, including children. These were not battlefield engagements. They were systemic attacks on hospitals, homes, transformers, power substations: an attempt to freeze a nation into submission.
This is the strategic context in which Europe has chosen to embark on industrial reform. And it is why speed, scale and standardisation are crucial.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte recently claimed Europe has “reversed” Russia’s advantage in ammunition production. That is welcome news, but it is nowhere near enough. Russia’s shift to a war economy has given it the capacity to produce ammunition at rates the West cannot match without structural reform. Last year, Moscow was generating in months what NATO struggled to produce in a year. Europe has begun to close that gap, but only just.
Europe’s defence budgets have finally risen but its defence output has not. Money is no longer the constraint. Time is. Europe’s challenge now is to turn its political decisions – its budget increases, its solidarity with Ukraine, its recognition of strategic vulnerability – into actual ammunition: shells, interceptors, drones, air defence systems and industrial capacity that can endure a long war.
To succeed, EDIP must trigger three shifts Europe has resisted for decades. First, Europe must buy together – compulsorily, not occasionally. Fragmented national purchases mean higher prices, slower delivery and incompatible systems. Joint orders for 155mm shells, air-defence interceptors, ISR drones, and counter-UAS systems should become standard. If the EU can aggregate gas purchases, it can aggregate defence orders.
Second, Europe must reward speed, not perfection. Ukraine has proven what a modern war economy looks like: four-to-six-week innovation cycles; carpentry shops turning into drone factories overnight; cheap, disposable mass that forces adversaries to expend far more expensive interceptors. Meanwhile, Europe still buys defence equipment like it is commissioning cathedrals – bespoke, immaculate and years late. “Good enough now” beats “perfect too late” every single time.
Third, Europe must treat industrial capacity as a capability in its own right. This means multi-year contracts, predictable demand signals, and targeted co-investment. Factories do not hire workers or expand lines on political speeches. They do it when order books justify risk. EDIP can help, but it must be accompanied by streamlined procurement, not fifteen layers of Brussels oversight.
And there is one more point Europe can no longer duck: Procurement must move at digital speed. Today, buying defence equipment in Europe still resembles trying to connect to the internet in 1998. Supplier discovery is slow. Vetting is repetitive. Tender cycles drag on for months. Integration of components can take quarters, not weeks.
None of this is about turning Europe into a war economy. It is about recognising reality. Russia, China and Iran have already fused their industrial, technological and military systems. Europe still separates them — at enormous strategic cost.
EDIP is the best chance in a generation to correct that. But only if it is treated as a catalyst for fundamental change, not a political trophy. If EDIP becomes the moment Europe finally matches money with output, resolve with production, political ambition with industrial reality, then it will shape the continent’s security for decades. If not, Ukraine will not be the only country to pay the price.
Blythe Crawford CBE is the former Commandant of the Air and Space Warfare Centre, driving radical transformation of capability development in support of Ukraine and a Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford Changing Character of War Centre.