If member countries agree, it will mark the end of the post-Cold War peace dividend that saw military spending shrivel.
“[The strategy] is not an answer to the war in Ukraine, but rather a broader response to a strategic paradigm shift. It's a recognition that [defense] is a subject that's not going to go away for a while,” said Camille Grand, a former NATO assistant secretary-general and now a distinguished policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
The aim is to get the EU — the world's second-largest economy — to finally begin punching its weight when it comes to defense.
That's an idea that has swirled around the EU since its creation as the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951.
The plan for a European defense union was born in the mind of one of Europe's founding fathers, France's Jean Monnet, and was ironically killed when French lawmakers refused to ratify the treaty in 1954. Now another Frenchman, European Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton, will take the lead in presenting the EU executive's defense plans.
Instead of forming a multinational fighting force — something that was considered in the early years of the Cold War — this time it’s all about building up the bloc’s military-industrial complex as well as decreasing Europe's reliance on American weapons — an especially acute fear as Donald Trump rises in the polls ahead of this year's U.S. election.