Europe’s defence industry ‘not ready’ for rearmament push, Estonian MEP warns

Estonian MEP and former general Riho Terras backed buying weapons from outside the EU during debate on defence spending.

The European defence industry is not ready to produce what is needed to support Ukraine and replenish EU countries’ military stocks, according to Riho Terras, a senior European People’s Party MEP and former general in the Estonian Army.

Terras argues that EU member states should buy the best and cheapest capabilities, regardless of their origin, pushing back against supporters of a “Made in Europe” strategy for defence procurement.

“The European industry is not yet ready to produce in the numbers, in the speed, and in the quality which is needed for our armed forces to speed up quickly the capabilities,” he said on Wednesday during a debate on the surge in defence spending at the Euronews Defence & Space Summit.

The debate, moderated by Euronews’s Shona Murray, also featured Greens/EFA MEP Hannah Neumann, Camille Grand, secretary-general of the Aerospace, Security and Defence Industries Association of Europe (ASD Europe), and Lorena Boix Alonso, deputy director-general of the European Commission’s department for defence industry.

All participants agreed on the need to spend more on defence, and to do so in a more coordinated way. But they diverged on how to reach the target of raising defence spending to 5% of GDP, agreed by NATO last year.

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