Column|European taxpayers’ money goes outside Europe to arms companies that Europeans cannot control in any way.
Russian the attack on Ukraine has shown that the European market economy is quite poor at producing weapons.
Usually companies and additional production are founded when someone dares to take a risk and trusts that the product or idea he developed will sell.
Killing products are the first thing that comes to mind when you think about what is almost certainly going to be sold everywhere right now and unfortunately also in the coming decades.
European leaders have been declaring for a couple of years that Russia’s armaments should be responded to. Intentions are pretty much left as talk.
According to the French research institute Iris, since the start of the war in Ukraine, EU countries have bought 78% of their defense supplies from outside the EU.
A few months ago, the president of the EU Commission Ursula von der Leyen announced the Union’s first Defense Industrial Strategy. The purpose is that EU countries acquire at least half of their weapons from EU countries by 2030.
Arms industry is of course a business of its own.
Weapons are not always allowed to be stored without an order, and states favor and also own companies from their own country. But in any case, it’s business, and usually very good business at that.
Not long ago, the world lived in a blissfully optimistic time about wars, even to the point where banks refused to finance arms production. For some reason, however, there has been enough money for killing machine factories outside of Europe.
“
The arms industry is a business of its own.
Arms manufacturers complain that states have not indicated precisely how much they will increase arms purchases in the future.
Wait a minute. Doesn’t the company usually invest even before its order book is full? If there had been European factories, they would have received skyrocketing orders after Russia invaded Ukraine. Now the states can’t even favor their own because there aren’t enough of their own.
Dictatorship Russia does not have this problem. It is rapidly growing into the military power it was thought to be before the war in Ukraine.
Opposite it is market economy Europe, whose military industrial companies seem to minimize their risks by waiting for the most lucrative and sure offers from taxpayers.
At the same time, the price rises when there is a shortage of the product. I hope the time will not come when states are forced to buy even more weapons at any price.
You can say that that time has already arrived. European taxpayers’ money goes outside Europe to companies that Europeans cannot control in any way.
The author is HS’s politics editor.
#Column #market #economy #poor #producing #weapons
