European Defence Union Plan Makes Ukraine Core of EU Security

A proposal circulating in Brussels for a six-part European Defence Union would mark the most ambitious overhaul of the continent's security architecture since the founding of NATO — and it deliberately places Ukraine, not Washington, at the centre of the design. The initiative, promoted by a group of Members of the European Parliament led by Dutch MEP Reinier van Lanschot and championed at Commission level by Defence and Space Commissioner Andrius Kubilius, envisages a structure that complements NATO but can act when the alliance does not124. For European security policy, and above all for Germany, which has staked its political and fiscal future on rearmament, the plan crystallises a question that has moved from the seminar room to the summit table: can Europe credibly defend itself, and can it do so with Ukraine rather than merely for it?

What the six-part plan actually contains

The proposed union would rest on six institutional pillars: a European Security Council as the main political decision-making body, a European Military Staff, a Military Intelligence Centre, a Strategic Support Unit, a Rapid Reaction Force, and a European deterrence mechanism grounded in Article 42.7 of the Treaty on European Union — the EU's mutual assistance clause2. Two design choices stand out. First, the Security Council would take decisions by qualified majority rather than unanimity, a direct response to the vetoes and deadlocks that have repeatedly paralysed EU foreign and security policy1. Second, the entire structure would be open to non-EU states — with Norway, the United Kingdom and, crucially, Ukraine named as indispensable partners12.

Van Lanschot describes the concept as "separable but not separate" from NATO: integrated with the alliance, yet capable of autonomous action if NATO's Article 5 collective-defence mechanism were not invoked23. Ukrainian military personnel would be able to serve voluntarily in a future European Rapid Reaction Force — a striking inversion of the relationship of just four years ago, when Ukraine was cast purely as a recipient of European assistance2. "Ukraine currently has the strongest army in Europe and is the most technologically advanced," the MEP argues, noting that the EU's framing has shifted from helping Ukraine survive to needing Ukraine's help to become stronger itself13.

The idea has high-level institutional backing. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen used her State of the Union address to propose a European Security Council that would include Ukraine, alongside a new "Emergency Security Protocol" for urgent consultations modelled on NATO's Article 4 — a way for a member state facing a threat to summon European solidarity without waiting for the next scheduled ministerial meeting35. Commissioner Kubilius, the plan's most prominent advocate, argues that the union could be built on intergovernmental agreements, potentially outside formal EU treaty structures, precisely so that non-EU states like Britain and Norway can join more easily45. His cost estimate for replacing the role played by roughly 100,000 American troops in Europe runs to about €500 billion49.

Why Ukraine is the load-bearing wall

Across the reporting and commentary, one premise is uncontested: any European security architecture that excludes Ukraine would be strategically incomplete. Ukraine brings assets no other European state possesses — the continent's most combat-experienced military, one of its most innovative defence-tech sectors, and a doctrine of networked drone-and-AI warfare forged under fire69. Ukrainian air defence intercepts roughly 80 percent of incoming targets, and Ukrainian drones have halted Russian advances on land and in the Black Sea while degrading Moscow's strategic bomber fleet, according to figures cited by Kubilius4.

The industrial dimension is where the architecture becomes concrete. Ukrainian companies are already embedded in flagship European projects: the Ukrainian interceptor missile FP-7.x, tested in flight and priced at roughly $700,000 against $3.8 million for an American PAC-3, forms the backbone of the "Freyja" pan-European anti-ballistic shield concept, with a memorandum signed at the Eurosatory 2026 exhibition in Paris with German radar maker Hensoldt, whose TRSL-4D radars can track more than 1,500 targets at ranges up to 250 kilometres; Leonardo and Norway's Kongsberg are expected to join4. Kubilius is blunt about the motive: Russian ballistic missiles now manoeuvre mid-flight, and legacy systems — Patriot, SAMP/T, IRIS-T — struggle to intercept them, making joint Ukrainian-European anti-missile modernisation an urgent necessity rather than charity4.

This is echoed at treaty level. The Council of the EU on 28 September approved five bloc-wide defence projects — in drones, air and missile defence, maritime and seabed security, space, and eastern-flank surveillance — with Ukraine participating in four of the five; the air-defence project EU-FIAMD alone is projected to cost €55–80 billion by 2040, and the Eastern Flank Watch up to €100 billion by 203610. The drone project, DECODER, follows directly from the lessons of the war10.

The Germany angle: from laggard to load-bearer

No member state has more riding on this architecture than Germany. Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who took office arguing that Europe must "achieve independence from the United States, step by step," has backed a constitutional amendment — approved by German lawmakers in March 2025 — exempting defence spending above 1 percent of GDP from the debt brake, unlocking borrowing on a scale German politics had considered unthinkable, with total rearmament plans of roughly €1 trillion111317. Merz framed the spending surge explicitly as "the first major step towards a new European defence community, which also includes countries that are not members of the European Union"17 — a formulation that reads almost as a direct endorsement of the defence-union model Kubilius later elaborated. He has separately proposed phased integration allowing Ukraine to participate in key EU meetings and instruments before formal accession6.

Germany is also the industrial anchor: Rheinmetall has launched a €1.3 billion ammunition expansion across multiple countries including Ukraine, where it plans an armoured-vehicle factory, and Kyiv and Berlin have signed an agreement on joint anti-ballistic missile development413. German IRIS-T systems are slated for integration into the Freya missile-defence architecture as it develops5.

The E5 framing — France, Germany, Italy, Poland and the UK as the union's core, integrating Ukraine and Norway via intergovernmental treaty — places Germany alongside France as the indispensable engine9. That carries risks. Analysts note that Europe still lacks a unified threat perception: for eastern-flank states Russia is the existential danger, while others rank migration, North African instability or China higher9. German fiscal firepower is also new and untested; the borrowing is being authorised at breakneck speed through constitutional changes that critics say sidestep normal democratic deliberation12. And the Dutch resistance to collective defence debt, Italy and Spain's lukewarmness — which forced the rebrand from "ReArm Europe" to "Readiness 2030" — and Hungary's unreliability all suggest the qualified-majority Security Council is designed precisely to route around capitals that drag their feet18[14.

Complement, not replacement — and the hard questions

Every source insists the union would strengthen NATO's European pillar rather than replace the alliance, and the transatlantic warning-shot is real: Washington sent CIA Director John Ratcliffe to Moscow to warn the Kremlin against kinetic attack on a NATO member, and Poland has fortified its border on warnings that a desperate Putin may lash out5. But the honest reading is that the ambiguity is deliberate. "Separable but not separate" means Europe wants a fallback if Washington hesitates — and the plan's timeline, with EU members projecting €2.5 trillion in defence spending by 2030 and potentially €7 trillion by 2035, is built for a decade in which American commitment cannot be assumed4.

The plan's credibility will rest on money and institutions, not declarations. Von der Leyen's Readiness 2030 mobilised headline figures of €800 billion, but only €150 billion of that is real pooled money via SAFE loans; the rest is a licence for national borrowing18[11. Skeptics warn Brussels has "passed the buck" to member states, and that the €500 billion Kubilius prices for replacing US troops is sobering against the fragmentation and procurement nationalism that have historically crippled European defence cooperation11[17. The Ukraine relationship itself carries tensions — the EU wants financial support conditioned on Kyiv raising tax revenues and aligning with EU law faster, demands Kyiv may consider excessive while it fights to defend Europe itself5.

Still, the direction of travel is unmistakable. A decade ago a European defence commissioner, continent-wide rearmament and a serious plan to operationalise Article 42.7 would have been fantasy; today all three are realities, and Ukraine — the country long treated as Europe's problem — is being written in as a founding pillar of its defence69. Germany, having gambled a trillion euros on exactly this future, has the most to lose if the institution-building stalls. The six-part plan is a blueprint, not yet a building. But it is the first European security blueprint that assumes Ukraine is part of Europe's answer rather than part of its question — and for Berlin, that assumption is now the entire strategy.