Rearming Europe by doing business
11 March 2025
War is big business and defence is as well. Last week, Italy's main weapon-producing company, Leonardo, signed a huge agreement with Türkiye's Baykar Group (a private Turkish defence company) for a joint venture in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). They are a type of automated military aircraft that is becoming more and more popular in modern warfare. Their distribution in Europe, however, has long remained reliant on US production.
The timing cannot be more profitable. Revenues from arms' sales and military services have been rising sharply since 2022, and Trump's unsettling foreign policy paralleled by the EU's decision to increase military spending is creating a perfect storm for companies to step up in the market of Europe's rearmament.
It is not the first time Leonardo has put itself on the international scene: last year, it started collaborating with the German company Rheinmetall in the armoured vehicles sector. The agreement might have important consequences for Europe's long-sought, and now especially urgent, military autonomy. As inter-governmental projects like Eurodrone struggle to keep up with the sector's high costs and with states' diverging priorities, company-based initiatives such as this one can boost innovation and scale-up production faster.
Those initiatives also have significant geopolitical consequences. Economic-military cooperation between Leonardo and Baykar is set to strengthen the ties between Italy and Türkiye, and between Türkiye and the EU. The two have long been in a complicated relationship, with the latter often wary of Türkiye's internal politics and international actions.
However, Türkiye is of strategic importance for the EU's defence autonomy, and a renewed cooperation seems necessary. This is, at least, the vision expressed by Leonardo's CEO Roberto Cingolani when stressing that European defence must include the UK and Türkiye – a view that Erdoğan has also voiced during London's Security Summit.
 | Ludovica Di Meco In the run-up towards European rearmament, the defence industry has a major role to play, and a major profit to make. This makes military production companies active foreign policy actors, able to gain from and influence strategic decisions. Not only do they lobby and influence policymakers: they can also leverage governments' dependence on the defence industry to boost exports, production, and military capabilities. At the same time, private companies' economic interests might be directly linked to specific foreign policy directions. Leonardo, for example, is a major weapons supplier to Israel, despite Meloni's declared intention to halt new arms transfers to the latter. The question, to be addressed sooner rather than later, is how best to navigate private companies' interests while supporting their role in granting Europe security autonomy. |
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