Cooperation and conflict in the European defence-industrial field: the role of relative gains

ABSTRACT

Defence-industrial collaborative activities have gained a central stage in the current European debate, based on the simultaneous presence of two systemic pressures (unipolarity and “defence-industrial globalization”) that are pushing EU member states towards more cooperation in these issues. Nevertheless, the European defence-industrial panorama still continues to be characterized by both cooperation and conflict. Protectionism, oligopolistic market straining and primary resource to domestic suppliers have prevented a more structured defence-industrial cooperation.

The aim of this article is to add empirical evidence to recent academic works that highlighted how relative gains play a key role in understanding the simultaneous presence of cooperation and conflict in the European security architecture. In doing so, this analysis focuses on the European defence-industrial landscape and specifically on British, French and Italian preferences towards armaments cooperation. To preview the conclusions, France, Italy and the UK have constantly pursued greater intra-European cooperation, in order to increase their power within the international defence-industrial market. However, they have refused to participate in European defence-industrial initiatives when other countries would have a greater advantage from this cooperation. This happened despite strong geopolitical and strategic incentives to cooperate.

KEYWORDS:

• Cooperation
• defence industry
• Europe
• relative gains
• security

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Western European Armaments Group (Art 1996).

2. From the French “Organisation Conjointe de Coopération en matière d’armement”.

3. Letter of Intent/ Framework Agreement.

4. European Defence Agency (Cobble 2004).

5. In a study on the state of Implementation of the Directives 2009/81/EC on defence and security procurement and the Directive 2009/43/EC on Intra-European Union transfers of defence-related products, Masson et al. (2015:38) noted that although the new regime is not yet functioning satisfactorily at the present time, it is premature to draw conclusions from a short period, given that it generally takes 5 to 10 years for a directive to be fully applied.

6. The US market was strongly protected by the “Buy American Act” of 1933 (amended in 1959 and 1960). On this issue see: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43140.pdf .

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Antonio Calcara

Antonio Calcara is a Ph.D. Candidate at the LUISS “Guido Carli”- Department of Political Science. He is currently working on his dissertation on armaments cooperation programmes at the European level, with a specific focus on how different configurations of state– defence industry relations in France, Germany, Italy and the UK impact on the choice to cooperate or not cooperate in multinational defence procurement projects.