E5 Bids To Lead European Security

On 24 June 2026, the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Poland and the United Kingdom met in Berlin to settle a common line on European security before NATO's summit in Ankara on 7-8 July. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte joined by video from Washington, after meeting Donald Trump (Bundesregierung, Euronews).

The meeting promoted E5, a self-selected group of Europe's five largest military powers, from a defence-ministers' format into a leaders' forum. It has no formal EU or NATO standing. For smaller states, including Malta, that is the point worth watching: some of the decisions that will shape Europe's security are being prepared outside the rooms where all member states sit. Berlin was a claim by five capitals to steer the continent's defence debate, and an admission that each means something different by "a stronger Europe."

Five flags, three visions

The joint statement covered defence spending, industrial cooperation and support for Ukraine (Elysée, UK Government). The wording was smooth. The politics underneath were not.

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

The sharpest differences sit inside the consensus. Germany wants Europe to do more within NATO: more money, more troops, more equipment fed into Alliance structures. France accepts that language in public, but sees E5 as a way to strengthen European control over defence industry and over who can act militarily, and under whose command. Poland wants the United States tied tightly to eastern-flank deterrence and is pushing for a permanent US base on Polish soil (DW). Italy's aim, as Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni framed it, is more direct: to be in the room where the decisions are made (Il Fatto Quotidiano).

E5 can coordinate positions, send political signals and put pressure on others. It cannot, by itself, turn those signals into NATO plans. NATO still does that work. The United States still controls key enablers such as air defence and intelligence. Defence companies still decide whether industrial promises can actually be delivered. That chain of authority matters because the most ambitious test of Franco-German defence cooperation had already failed weeks before Berlin.

The FCAS warning

FCAS/SCAF, the next-generation fighter system meant to combine crewed aircraft with remote drones, collapsed because Dassault and Airbus never settled who would control design, intellectual property and exports (The Guardian, ICDS). That failure is the clearest answer to the cooperation rhetoric. Berlin and Paris can agree on a summit statement. They could not agree on who builds the plane.

The EU has put money behind 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). The mechanism is meant to stop member states from buying separately, and often outside Europe, when they could be building a common industrial base.

Money does not solve the FCAS problem on its own. 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 trying to hold together a practical bargain: Europe pays more and does more, so that Washington stays committed. But there is no public evidence of a binding US guarantee on specific troops, enablers or operational support in return (Politico).

Article 5, NATO's mutual-defence clause, remains legally intact. The risk is more practical than legal. Washington may honour 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 hierarchy. Madrid is the EU's fourth-largest economy, but E5 is built around military weight and closeness to the eastern-flank threat, not EU institutional rank (Antena 3, Euronews Spain). That matters for every state outside the format. It will influence which countries shape NATO planning, whose threat perception counts first, and how much space remains for smaller EU members to affect decisions after the big capitals have aligned.

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