Today ENAAT is launching its new report “From war lobby to war economy, How the arms industry shapes European policies”.
The EU arms industry has been fostering increasingly close ties with EU policy-makers and institutions, driving new steps in EU militarisation and now shamelessly exploiting the Russian invasion or fundamental challenges like climate change.
The report shows that the largest EU arms companies and major lobby organisations have had hundreds of meetings with the European Commission and Members of the European Parliament in the last decade. The European Commission has established a new Directorate-General for the Defence Industry and Space (DG DEFIS), which functions as a service provider for the arms industry.
One of the most important issues for arms companies is their access to private finance. The industry has been lobbying relentlessly against its exclusion in investors’ ESG policies and the proposed label of ‘socially unsustainable’ in the EU social taxonomy. While the military sector contributes significantly to GHG emissions and environmental damage, the industry seeks recognition of the relationship it claims exists between security and sustainability.
These lobby efforts and close ties with policy-makers bear fruit, with ongoing processes of allocating more money to arms production, introducing new support instruments and calls for the industry’s access to sustainable finance being made by all EU institutions and main European leaders.
