How the militarist drift subverts community law and enriches the U.S. military-industrial complex. Join us on Telegram , Twitter , and VK . Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su The problem of the European Union is not only a total disconnect between what it represents and the semiotic meaning of its very designation – “union” –, but also the fact that, in seeking and aspiring to the inconsistent image of “union” that we are presented with in the corporate media and in the speeches of its leaders, it bases itself solely and exclusively on fostering the idea that the Russian Federation is a vital enemy, around which all territorial, military, industrial, and communication strategy must rest. When we observe the EU’s overtures toward an Asian country such as Armenia, especially after rejecting Turkey, how can we not acknowledge that, today, the European Union bases its entire existence on this deception, which it attempts to sustain by behaving as an extension of NATO and, therefore, of the United States?
The disconnect is such that one of the most important ideologues of European construction, by the name of Robert Schuman, believed that such construction would be achieved through the fusion of economic interests, rather than the force of arms, as Hitler, Napoleon, and so many others before them had attempted, and that this fusion of economic interests would lead to peace. Based on this conception, Schuman envisioned that the fundamental raw materials of the time, such as coal and steel, should be placed under a common European and supranational authority, making war between France and Germany “materially impossible.” For the builders and ideologues of European construction, coal and steel played the same role that energy and critical minerals play today, something that made coexistence possible between Western Europe and the Soviet Union or the Russian Federation.
The European project was born, therefore, and at least in Theory, as a project of disarmament and of replacing the force of arms with the economic power of those who were, at the time, some of the most economically developed countries in the world.
Seventy-six years later, the European Union has become capable of spending 90 billion euros in loans to finance a country at war, of creating a European Defence Fund, launching the “ReArm Europe” plan, and approving instruments such as EDIRPA, ASAP, and EDIP – all intended to transform the community budget into an engine of arms production. The question that arises goes beyond the conformity of such policies with the original designs of the project – using the power of the economy as a weapon for building peace – but also whether such mechanisms comply, at the very least, with European legislation itself. Does a “European Union” still exist?
Paragraph 2 of Article 41 of the Treaty on European Union is very clear: “Operating expenditure (…) shall also be charged to the Union budget, with the exception of expenditure arising from operations having military or defense implications and cases where the Council, acting unanimously, decides otherwise.” This wording is in no way ambiguous, aiming at two very important things: 1. Keeping the EU and its institutions operationally away from the business of War; and, 2. Preventing the European Union from financing military expenditure. Reading this article today seems like we are facing a joke, and it tells us how far the betrayal of the “principles and values” that Von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas so loudly proclaim has gone. The more they proclaim them, the further they move away from them.
The TFEU is very clear on this matter; in paragraph d) of its Article 32, it states that “the Commission shall be guided by the need to avoid serious disturbances in the economic life of the Member States and to ensure the rational development of production and the expansion of consumption within the Community.” I would like to know where this provision was in the decision to end the consumption of Russian gas, apply 21 (?!?!) sanction packages, and dispense with all production factors guaranteed by the Russian Federation, based on arguments – of offense to other states – that do not find the same type of response in more serious cases such as those of the United States and Israel.
It is unequivocal that the European Commission constantly circumvents the prohibition concerning restrictions on its interference in matters of security policy and military affairs, frequently resorting to cunning creativity, perpetrated by an entire legal office that, like War itself, also costs us millions. Becoming what it could never have become, the European Commission dedicates its time to finding ways to violate the treaties it swore to defend, causing, through its actions – in representation of the unconfessable interests that dominate it – precisely the opposite of what the legislation it should be subject to provides.
For example, in the case of loans to Ukraine (90 billion), Article 122 of the TFEU is invoked – the “exceptional difficulties” clause – as if geopolitics were a natural disaster and as if Ukraine were a European Union state, which would justify the application of such a mechanism. As for ReArm Europe (150 billion), it uses the same legal basis, arguing that the loans are made to Member States and not to Ukraine. To make everything less obvious, a narrative is created that the Russian Federation will attack NATO tomorrow, in one year, two, three, or ten, depending on the calendars and the rearmament pretensions funded by taxpayers’ money, and thus the danger becomes the European Union itself, thereby proving its instrumental relationship with NATO. Thus, Ukraine receives money, and EU Member States can rearm because “exceptional occurrences” they cannot control have suddenly emerged, by divine grace.
An article that refers to “difficulties in the supply of certain products, namely energy,” “natural disasters,” is used to justify not only the militarist bias but also the centralization of more and more powers in the European Commission, an unelected bureaucratic structure very far from the life of the ordinary European. Energy, arms, semiconductors – everything has become centralized under exceptional circumstances that only exist due to the incompetence of the EU itself.
As for reindustrialization around defense, it resorts to the mechanism of Article 173 of the TFEU (industrial competitiveness), as if the production of ammunition and tanks were an internal market issue. Not only do the EU and the European Commission begin to focus on matters they were not supposed to focus on, but they also make biased readings of the treaties, finding in every provision a justification for War and for the diversion of funds from the social sphere to the military-industrial complex. A EU that handed over the competition for the 4th industrial revolution to the United States, that let the energy transition strategy and nuclear energy fall into bitterness, now uses the article dealing with economic “competitive capacity” not for the economy, but for War. For military competition.
This is not legal interpretation! It is a systematic circumvention technique. Article 24, paragraph 1 of the TEU prohibits the adoption of legislative acts in the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). The solution? Do not adopt the instruments under the CFSP banner. Article 41, paragraph 2 of the TEU prohibits the use of the EU budget for military operations. The solution? Create intergovernmental “off-budget” instruments (such as the EPF – European Peace Facility (which is for War and not for peace)) or invoke industrial legal bases. Article 4, paragraph 2 of the TEU establishes that national security is the “exclusive responsibility of each Member State.” The solution? Centralize defense funding in Brussels.
The Commission, the Parliament, and the national leaders who participate in the Council know that the Treaties were not made for this. As do many echo chambers with daily airtime! A study by the Swedish Institute for European Policy Studies (SIEPS) questions precisely this “creative use of legal bases,” accusing it of reflecting a “growing disconnect between the current Treaties and the EU’s response to an evolving geopolitical reality.” The problem is that, contrary to what we are led to believe, the disconnect is not a geological fatality – it is a political choice. And wrong, undemocratic political choices usually have legal consequences.
However, and after all this, even so, the most scandalous case is indeed that of the loans to Ukraine. Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic opposed them. Under the CFSP rules. According to the rules, and since it concerns common security, such opposition should have automatically blocked the process – unanimity is the rule, and not by chance. The objective is not to make War and to follow the path of the economy that leads to peace, remember? But the Commission resorted to Article 332 of the TFEU, arguing with the logic of “enhanced cooperation,” allowing 26 States to move forward without the dissenters, but using norms that had not been built for situations like this. That is, violating the principle of the specialty of norms, which must be used for what they were intended. Yet another sly strategy to circumvent European legislation.
This constitutes, in constitutional terms, a coup. Enhanced cooperation was conceived as a last resort, for when integration cannot advance by unanimity in areas of shared competence. But the CFSP is not an area of shared competence like the others. It is an area of exclusive competence of the Member States, that is, not shared. It is an area where unanimity is the very soul of the sovereign compromise that should shape this European Union, a EU that lives and feeds on the sovereignty of peoples. Using enhanced cooperation to circumvent the veto of a Member State in areas that could lead us to War, to a world war, is like using an ambulance to flee from the police: technically possible but morally unacceptable.
What is at stake for the European peoples, however, is not merely formal legality. It is the principle of mutual trust between Member States. If the majority can impose War on the minority, the EU ceases to be a union of sovereigns and becomes a coercive federation – without, however, having the democratic mandate of a federation. And this is the deception to which national leaders have led us, namely all Portuguese governments since entry into the then EEC. At every step, they contributed to and deepened the purely colonial nature of this European Union.
But there is, however, an even deeper betrayal. The militarist drift of the EU does not strengthen Europe. It strengthens, especially, the United States. The numbers are relentless. Between 2020 and 2024, U.S. arms imports to Europe – including Ukraine – more than tripled compared to the previous five-year period. The U.S. share of global arms exports rose from 35% to 43%. Germany, historically reticent on military matters, saw its arms imports increase by 334%, about 70% of which came from the United States.
The F-35 is the perfect symbol of this dependence. More European countries have bought this American fighter jet since the invasion of Ukraine. All have become dependent on the U.S. government and Lockheed Martin for software updates. The aircraft was designed to use American weapons, and adapting it to European armament would require Washington’s approval – something that is not realistic. Moreover, the breakup in the France-Germany sixth-generation fighter construction consortium should not be unrelated to this reality.
The “ReArm Europe” plan of 150 billion euros, despite its pompous name, is by no means a plan of European autonomy. It is, rather, a plan of purchase. And who sells? The United States. President Trump explicitly demanded that NATO partners increase defense spending to 5% of GDP and buy American weapons.
Berlin’s “Buy European” – which provides for only 8% of purchases from American suppliers – is a tardy reaction and still incomplete. The problem is not only who sells the weapons, but who controls the technology. Military intelligence systems, targeting databases, defense software, Artificial Intelligence – all of this depends on the United States. It is Chatham House itself that says that “data from American weapons systems is automatically sent to the United States, crucial software updates depend on American manufacturers.”
The betrayal is twofold. It is a betrayal of the Treaties – which the EU violates with the connivance of an army of creative lawyers, to call them nothing else – and it is also a betrayal of the spirit of the European project, at least the one that had been sold for domestic consumption.
Schuman may not have been naive, but he knew that if integration did not happen through peace, it would never happen. At least that is what he said. Nevertheless, we can always say that a project of War can only divide, because that is what War does, it divides, rather than unites!
The EU is doing exactly that. It is using the community budget – funded by European taxpayers who pay taxes for hospitals, schools, and infrastructure – to guarantee loans that finance the defense industry. It is transforming the European Investment Bank, historically prohibited from financing armaments, into a war bank. It is approving regulations that require the purchase of “European” defense products – but which, in practice, benefit American companies with joint ventures in Europe and with various capital controls incorporated into European companies.
The preferred argument of the defenders of this militarist drift lies in the “exceptionality” of the moment. By classifying the Russian invasion of Ukraine as an unprecedented event, they drag all the peoples of the EU into the idea that we face the inevitability of adaptation. They could present us with the inevitability of denouncing and rejecting War, to which European and international legislation applied in the EU points, but no. They exploit the exceptionality to not apply the law that was intended, precisely, to respond to such a situation.
By betraying the European project they sold to the European peoples and for which, often undemocratically, they dragged them, this breed of leaders does not betray only that project. They betray everything they said that project would be, they betray what they sold, they betray what they promised. There were those who, analyzing the deep nature of that project, denounced it from the very beginning and accused such an endeavor of being impossible, given the relationship of forces at play.
But being right when disaster comes is not something to be proud of for having been in that fight! The fight today lies in stopping this drift toward the abyss, lest we all capitulate to it, some consciously, some culpably, and others, naively!
SOURCES AND EXTERNAL REFERENCES
- €90 Billion Loan to Ukraine (2026-2027
- - Council of the EU, “ Council finalises €90 billion support loan to Ukraine ,” April 23, 2026.
- - The Conversation, “ EU agrees €90 billion loan to Ukraine, but squabbles over frozen Russian assets expose the bloc’s deep divisions ,” December 19, 2025.
- - “ReArm Europe” Plan (€150 billion
- - European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS), “ ReArm Europe Plan/Readiness 2030 ,” April 2025.
- - European Peace Facility (EPF) – “Off-Budget” Instrument:
- - Foreign Policy Instruments (FPI), European Commission.
- - European Law Blog, “ The European Peace Facility: A Problem Of Democratic Accountability? ,” February 2, 2026.
- - Article 122 TFEU Legal Basis (Exceptional Difficulties
- - SIEPS (Swedish Institute for European Policy Studies), “ Article 122 TFEU: The legal workaround to freeze Russian assets and possible repercussions ,” December 17, 2025.
- - Max Planck Institute, “ Frozen assets: Hard compromises in the European Council ,” April 17, 2026.
- - Article 332 TFEU (Enhanced Cooperation) and Veto by Hungary, Slovakia, and Czech Republic:
- - Max Planck Institute, “ Frozen assets: Hard compromises in the European Council ,” April 17, 2026 (on enhanced cooperation with 24 Member States).
- - U.S. Arms Exports to Europe (2020-2024
- - SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute), “ Trends in International Arms Transfers, 2024 ,” March 2025.
- - SIPRI, “ Global arms flows jump nearly 10 per cent as European demand soars ,” March 9, 2026.
- - U.S. Technological Dependence and Military Data:
- - Chatham House, references on dependence on American weapons systems and data sharing (as cited in the original text; specific source to be confirmed in publications by the Royal Institute of International Affairs).
- - Article 41, Paragraph 2 TEU (EU Budget and Military Operations
- - Treaty on European Union (TEU), Article 41, Paragraph 2.
- - Article 32, Paragraph d) TFEU (Rational Development of Production
- - Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), Article 32, Paragraph d).
- - Article 173 TFEU (Industrial Competitiveness
- - Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), Article 173.
- - Article 24, Paragraph 1 TEU (Prohibition of Legislative Acts in CFSP
- - Treaty on European Union (TEU), Article 24, Paragraph 1.
- - Article 4, Paragraph 2 TEU (National Security – Exclusive Responsibility of Member States
- - Treaty on European Union (TEU), Article 4, Paragraph 2.
- - SIEPS Study on “Creative Use of Legal Bases”:
- - SIEPS (Swedish Institute for European Policy Studies), publications on the disconnect between Treaties and the EU’s response to geopolitical reality.
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