Building on the EU-UK relationship: a strategic defence and security partnership for a shared European continent.
Margaryta Khvostova, a Doctoral Fellow at the Centre for Britain and Europe, reflects on the launch of her newly co-authored EU–UK report on European Strategic Defence, written with Professor Amelia Hadfield, Sir Nick Harvey, Philippe Lefevre, Paul Taylor and Maria Martistiute, presented at the Houses of Parliament on 8 December. The event was hosted by Calvin Bailey MBE MP and featured contributions from both Calvin and Lord Peter Ricketts GCMG GCVO.
SAFE may have stumbled, but cooperation doesn’t have to. That was the clearest undertone at the launch of the Centre for Britain and Europe’s newest co-produced report with European Movement UK and the European Policy Centre, Building on the EU-UK Relationship: A Strategic Defence and Security Partnership for a Shared European Continent (PDF). The discussion highlighted a growing disconnect between high-level geopolitics - as seen in Monday's No. 10 meeting with Zelensky, Starmer, Macron, and Merz - and the slower, more complex reality of building practical defence cooperation through mechanisms like SAFE. The point wasn’t to romanticise alignment, but to confront the implementation gap head-on.
A second, sharper note was realism about the United States. The US National Security Strategy and wider signalling were treated less as reassurance and more as a warning against false comfort: Europe and the UK cannot plan based on hopeful assumptions about Trump’s administration, or any future White House. That doesn’t imply decoupling, but it does demand a credible European capability base that can function even when US attention, political will, expertise, or enabling technologies are constrained.
The report provides:
- A thorough overview of the current ‘state of play’ in this and related areas;
- Examples of deepening political trust and dialogue between the EU and UK;
- The substantive issues of how both sides can build on hybrid and foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) as a key area of cooperation;
- Steps that can and must be taken to swiftly advance industrial and technological cooperation in defence and security;
- A review of current political obstacles;
- A range of policy recommendations, including the prioritisation of industrial and Supply Chain Integration (including prioritising agreements to promote access to EU programmes including EDF, SAFE, and EDIP), and embedding Strategic EDTIB and EDU Participation.
"The EU and the UK must recognise that both share a wartime urgency and responsibility to bolster European defence and security and support Ukraine at a time where Russia’s attacks are increasing and the world is becoming more geopolitically unsafe. US shifting priorities require new ambition for Europe that can only be achieved by a successful EU-UK defence and security relationship, and real military confrontation is at a risk we must prepare for." - Building on the EU-UK Relationship Dec 2025 A Strategic Defence and Security Partnership for a Shared European Continent Report
In that context, the “Coalition of the Willing” emerged as more than a slogan: it was framed as the European pillar of NATO beginning to take shape, pragmatic, capability-first, and oriented towards delivery rather than perfect architecture. The test is deterrence: being able to respond if necessary and reducing structural overreliance on US tech and know-how that still defines too much of Europe’s defence posture.
Finally, there was an unusually candid emphasis on communicating the urgency of practical steps being taken. If redistribution from welfare to defence is coming, it has to be argued for openly, patiently, and in national terms. The case is not simply that we are assisting Ukraine, but that we are rebuilding the defence of Europe and the UK for a threat that Russia itself frames as a wider war with the West. The launch, in other words, was a call to replace illusions with delivery: tighter planning horizons, practical cooperation, and public legitimacy for a more serious European security settlement.
