Europe’s military ambitions are real. Yet the Union’s attempt to build a coherent battle-ready architecture—such as the European Defence Council—faces a problem closer to home than Moscow or Washington: the bloc’s own institutions cannot agree on who is in charge.
The money is moving, the rhetoric is sharp and the geopolitical pressure is unrelenting. Yet the goal of creating a sturdier defence arrangement proves elusive. Think the European Defence Council (EDC), a body which does not yet exist, whose precise shape nobody has agreed upon, and whose very conception exposes a fault-line running through the heart of Brussels.
The idea has gained momentum since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine forced EU leaders to take collective defence seriously (no mean feat in and of itself). Initial discussions about the EDC began in that context, and by 2026 they remained exactly that, i.e., discussions. No formal proposal for European Parliament approval has seen the light of day. No treaty change is in sight.
Kallas makes her case
The expected timeline, according to the source material, runs to 2028–2029 for any formal establishment, contingent on political consensus that has so far proved elusive. What has not been elusive is the appetite of the EU’s most energetic foreign-policy voice to push the idea forward.
Kaja Kallas, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, has been the EDC’s most prominent advocate. Her case has roots in operational logic. Speaking at the European Defence Agency’s annual conference in 2026, she set out her priorities with characteristic directness. “Capabilities, industry, partnerships, decision-making: these are the four areas where we need urgent action,” she said. The formulation is deliberate. Decision-making may not be an afterthought, but it comes last.
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Ms Kallas has also been explicit about the treaty tools she believes the EU is failing to use. “We should operationalise our own article 42.7 of the Treaty on the European Union,” she said at the same event. Article 42.7 is the EU’s mutual-defence clause, invoked only once—by France after the 2015 Paris attacks—and largely dormant since. Calling for its operationalisation is a signal that Ms Kallas sees the existing toolkit as underused, not inadequate.
Her case for more ministerial meetings is just as unequivocal. “When it comes to our Defence Ministers’ Meetings (Defence Councils), they need to happen more frequently,” she said. The implication is clear: the current cadence of EU defence diplomacy is too slow for the threat environment. “The fourth priority for action is how to make our political and military decision-making more fit for purpose, more responsive to the urgent situation we find ourselves in,” she added.
The industry dimension
Ms Kallas does not limit her vision for the EDC to command and crisis response. She has also pushed it as a vehicle for aggregating demand and driving joint procurement. “Together we must help to aggregate demand and encourage joint procurement so that industry can better predict how to make investment decisions,” she said earlier this year. That matters; one of the EU’s widely acknowledged defence problems is fragmentation. It produces duplication, inefficiency and a defence-industrial base that cannot easily scale.
The European Defence Agency, an institution Ms Kallas leads—politically, not in its day-to-day operation—has made a similar point. “The EU must build a more responsive defence industry to assume greater responsibility for its own security and sustain support for Ukraine,” the EDA said in a recent statement. It is a coherent, if not yet dominant, voice for a more operational and industry-focused EDC.
Capabilities, industry, partnerships, decision-making: these are the four areas where we need urgent action. — Kaja Kallas, the EU’s top diplomat
The analytical community has reinforced this line of thinking. “The effectiveness of EU foreign policy remains constrained by slow decision-making mechanisms, highlighting the importance of internal reforms,” noted an analysis by Beyond Horizon, a Belgium-based think-tank, this year. That is a polite way of saying that the EU’s machinery is not fit for the moment; a diagnosis Ms Kallas would be unlikely to dispute.
Kubilius: a parallel vision
Andrius Kubilius, the EU Commissioner for Defence and Space, shares the diagnosis but not quite the prescription. His proposal—framed as a European Security Council rather than a Defence Council—is broader, more constitutional and more Commission-centric in its logic. In a paper called The Case for a European Security Council published in January, he wrote: “‘This is Europe’s independence moment,’ Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told the European Parliament in her recent statement. I cannot agree more! This is Europe’s independence in defence moment!”
Mr Kubilius envisions a body with permanent members—the so-called E5 of Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Poland—plus the Commission President, the Council President and three rotating member states. He also proposes that the United Kingdom be invited when broader European defence issues, beyond strictly EU matters, are on the agenda.
Most strikingly, he argues that in a crisis, the body should be able to act without constraint: “In the case of a (military) crisis, the European Security Council needs in advance to have a mandate to operate without any limits as supreme EU coordination and decision-making body, with the obligation to receive ex-post approval of the decisions in the Council.”
This is an ambitious claim. It would, if accepted, create a body with emergency powers that supersede normal procedure. It would also place the Commission President—Ms von der Leyen, for now—at the top table of European defence governance.
Alignments and divergences
That is where the Kubilius vision and the Kallas vision begin to diverge. Both want faster decisions. Both want more political ownership of defence. But Mr Kubilius’s model concentrates authority in a body that includes the Commission President as a permanent fixture, while Ms Kallas’s instinct points towards ministerial meetings that she, as High Representative, would likely chair.
The overlap between the two visions is genuine. Both accept that the EU’s current decision-making pace is inadequate. Both see joint procurement and industrial coordination as central, not peripheral, to any new architecture. They also acknowledge that the geopolitical moment—Russia’s war, American strategic reorientation, the pressure on NATO—demands a step change in EU defence ambition.
The effectiveness of EU foreign policy remains constrained by slow decision-making mechanisms, highlighting the importance of internal reforms. — Beyond Horizon
The Centre for European Reform has offered a useful caution on this front. Luigi Scazzieri wrote in a policy brief on European defence last year: “The EU’s initiatives are more likely to be successful if they are sharply focused on addressing military needs and if they add real value to member-states’ national efforts. The EU should focus on those capabilities that are military priorities and that are broadly shared by the member-states.”
He also warned: “Member-states’ scepticism about giving the Commission more powers in defence will probably throttle its ambitions to bring about a defence single market through regulation, or to move towards more EU-level defence planning.” The scepticism is real, and it applies with equal force to both the EDC and the European Security Council proposals.
The rift beneath the surface
The deeper problem is not a disagreement between Ms Kallas and Mr Kubilius over council formats. It is the structural tension between the EEAS, which Ms Kallas leads, and the Commission, which Ms von der Leyen leads. The latter has been expanding steadily into foreign and defence policy territory that the EEAS regards as its own.
The Commission created the Defence and Space Commissioner role in 2024, adding Mr Kubilius to a field already occupied by Ms Kallas. It established a new Directorate-General for the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf (DG MENA) as late as last year, further extending its reach into foreign-policy-adjacent work. And Ms von der Leyen reportedly sought to establish an intelligence cell under her direct supervision. Ms Kallas opposed it, as it would have significantly reduced her own room for manoeuvre.
The commentariat largely agrees that the Commission’s appetite for creating parallel roles to the EU High Representative’s mandate has inevitably resulted in rivalry. The consequences have been visible. During the EU’s response to the Iran crisis in March 2026, it was reported that Ms von der Leyen and Ms Kallas did not speak to each other directly, producing competing public statements within minutes of each other and leaving member-state diplomats exasperated.
“This lack of dialogue—or, if not worse, the apparent unwillingness to engage—clearly exposes the internal tensions between the High Representative and the Commission,” noted the high-brow Hungarian Conservative quarterly. (Despite what you might think at first sight, the publication is sane.) The Parliament’s defence-committee chair, MEP Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (Renew/DEU), described it as a “division of competences” that was not always clearly balanced.
Von der Leyen’s framing
Ms von der Leyen has not been passive. Her own rhetoric on defence has been forceful. “We must deliver a new era of European security, and that starts with a just and lasting peace for Ukraine and strengthening our own defences,” her statement read in 2026 (the oft-repeated line ‘just and lasting peace’ has become a sort of apage Satanas for any Commission spokesperson when facing an inconvenient question on the topic). That is not the language of an institution content to manage budgets from the sidelines. It is the language of a Commission President who sees defence as a core part of her political legacy.
The problem, as institutional analysts have noted, is that Ms von der Leyen’s assertiveness comes at a cost to coherence. Joshua Poggianti, an EU institutional expert and former EEAS official, put it succinctly as early as a year ago.
In the case of a (military) crisis, the European Security Council needs in advance to have a mandate to operate without any limits as supreme EU coordination and decision-making body. — Andrius Kubilius, EU defence commissioner
“Far from a true European Union Foreign Affairs Minister, the HR/VP is too often overshadowed by Ursula von der Leyen,” Mr Poggianti’s article titled Who do I call in 2025? Von der Leyen before Kallas reads. “To safeguard the EU’s geopolitical relevance in today’s world, the role’s mandate must be reinforced within the Commission, and Kallas elevated to a First Vice-President. Regarding the Commission President, a clearer and more balanced division of tasks would ensure greater institutional coherence on the global stage.”
What member states want
Mr Poggianti’s was a pointed, if measured, diagnosis. The current arrangement is not working, and the fix requires political will that is yet to emerge. But then there is the member-state picture, similarly mixed.
Front-line states—Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland—strongly support a more robust collective defence framework and have echoed Ms Kallas’s urgency. Germany and France have expressed support in principle for the EDC, viewing it as a vehicle for EU strategic autonomy. But Italy and the Netherlands have raised concerns about defence spending commitments and national sovereignty. Sweden and Finland, newer NATO members with strong traditions of caution about supranational military structures, are still weighing the implications.
That divergence matters because any EDC will require consensus, or something close to it. The source material notes that the European Peace Facility, a key financing instrument for Ukraine support, was frozen for months after Hungary’s veto in 2024, only becoming unblocked after a change of government in Budapest in 2026. That episode illustrates how national politics can today paralyse EU defence instruments regardless of what any proposed council might decide.
A long road to 2029
The timeline for the EDC therefore remains uncertain, to say the least. Formal proposals may be tabled for debate in late 2026 or 2027, with establishment possible in 2028–2029 if political consensus holds; admittedly a big if.
That is a long horizon for an institution that presents itself as responding to an urgent security moment. The gap between the rhetoric of urgency and the pace of institutional design is itself a kind of commentary on the EU’s predicament.
The EU should focus on those capabilities that are military priorities and that are broadly shared by the member-states. — Centre for European Reform
Speculation is warranted here. If the EDC does emerge, it will almost certainly reflect a negotiated compromise between the EEAS and Commission visions. That would probably give ministers a regular forum while leaving the question of who chairs it, and who controls its budget instruments, deliberately ambiguous. That ambiguity may be the price of agreement. It would also, almost certainly, perpetuate the rivalry it was meant to resolve.
Coherence, or the lack of it
The deeper question is whether the EU can afford to keep deferring it. Slow decision-making, fragmented procurement and institutional rivalry are not abstract problems. As the bloc’s officials often acknowledge and bemoan themselves, it has real consequences for Ukraine support, for European deterrence and for the EU’s credibility as a security actor.
Ms Kallas’s answer is to push harder and faster. Ms von der Leyen’s answer is to keep the Commission at the centre of whatever emerges. Neither is the wrong answer. But they are not yet the same answer; and until they are, the European Defence Council will remain what it has been since the idea was first floated: a proposal, a process and a promise, waiting to become a fact.
The balance of evidence suggests no open personal animus, but a durable contest for visibility and authority. If the EU creates a defence council, it will not end that contest. It may simply formalise it. In Brussels, that often counts as progress.
