Five military powers claim European security lead

On 24 June 2026, the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Poland and the United Kingdom met in Berlin to align on European security before NATO's summit in Ankara on 7-8 July. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte joined by video from Washington, where he had just met Donald Trump (Bundesregierung, Euronews). The gathering turned E5, a self-selected group of Europe's five largest military powers with no formal EU or NATO standing, from a defence-ministers' format into a leaders' group for the first time. Berlin was a claim by five capitals to steer European security, and a quiet admission that each of them means something different by "a stronger Europe."

Five Flags, Three Visions

The joint statement covered defence spending, industrial cooperation and Ukraine support (Elysée, UK Government). The language was consensual. The politics beneath it were not.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz hosted the summit to build a common line before Ankara. He also wanted to expand the old E3 habit, where Paris, Berlin and London managed European security among themselves, by bringing in Rome and Warsaw. Both had objected to being left out (Le Figaro, Deutschlandfunk).

The three sharpest contrasts sit inside that consensus. Germany wants Europe doing more inside NATO, not outside it: more money and forces fed into existing Alliance structures. France accepts that frame publicly but reads E5 as a vehicle for European control over defence industry and who can act militarily, and under whose command. Poland wants the United States locked into eastern-flank deterrence and is bargaining for a permanent US base on Polish soil (DW). Italy's goal, as Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni framed it, is simpler: be inside the room where decisions are made (Il Fatto Quotidiano).

E5 can coordinate positions, signal intent and apply pressure. But NATO still turns that into alliance planning, the US still controls key enablers like air defence and intelligence, and defence firms still control industrial delivery. That authority chain matters because the most ambitious test of Franco-German cooperation collapsed weeks before Berlin.

The FCAS Warning

FCAS/SCAF, a next-generation fighter system meant to pair crewed aircraft with remote drones, failed because Dassault and Airbus never settled who would control design, intellectual property and exports (The Guardian, ICDS). That collapse is the sharpest evidence against E5's cooperation rhetoric. Berlin and Paris can agree on a summit statement. They could not agree on who builds the plane.

The EU has launched money to push joint procurement. Its SAFE instrument (Security Action for Europe) offers up to €150 billion in defence loans, with rules requiring European-origin content (European Commission). But money alone does not solve the FCAS problem. Joint production still depends on national governments and companies agreeing who controls what. Reporting found that while 19 states had applied for SAFE funds, only three operational arrangements were complete (Euperspectives).

What the US Will Actually Do

Rutte's Washington-to-Berlin choreography was deliberate. He told allies that European NATO members and Canada had spent more than $90 billion extra in 2025 compared with the previous year (Atlantic Council). He also confirmed that the United States had lowered some pledged force contributions to NATO planning, and that Europeans were already filling parts of the gap (NATO).

Rutte is mediating a practical bargain: Europe pays and does more to preserve American commitment. But no public evidence shows a binding US guarantee of specific troops, enablers or operational support in return (Politico). Article 5, NATO's mutual-defence clause, remains legally intact. The risk is not that Washington tears up the treaty. It is that Washington honours it slowly, narrowly, or on its own terms: delaying basing decisions, holding back stockpile releases, or attaching conditions to Patriot deployments.

Spain's absence shows the new pecking order. Madrid is the EU's fourth-largest economy, but E5 selects for military weight and proximity to the eastern-flank threat, not EU institutional rank (Antena 3, Euronews Spain). That rule will shape which countries influence NATO planning and whose threat perception dominates.

The Ankara summit in two weeks will test whether E5 coordination produces alliance commitments. The harder question is whether five capitals can build a European pillar, Europeans carrying more of NATO's military burden, when they cannot agree on who designs its weapons.