PROFILE: The E5 united — how five European capitals rewrote collective security

Introduction: A historic declaration on June 24, 2026

Five nations, one text, one ambition

On June 24, 2026, the governments of France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Poland — the E5 group — jointly published a declaration on European defense leadership, according to the official statement from the British government (GOV.UK). This text is more than a routine diplomatic communiqué. It is a declaration of strategic maturity: five of Europe's most powerful nations affirm their shared will to take on a growing share of their own security, complementing NATO without depending on it entirely.

The E5 represents approximately 82% of European defense spending within NATO. When these five nations speak with a single voice, they represent the center of gravity of European military and economic power. The June 24 declaration is not symbolic — it commits real capabilities, real budgets, and real political wills that, if sustained, could transform the continent's security landscape.

What the E5 declaration contains

According to the GOV.UK communiqué of June 24, 2026, the E5 declaration covers several fundamental axes: shared European leadership in NATO's collective defense, an accelerated joint development of European long-range precision strike capabilities, the joint acquisition of air defense capabilities, investment in unmanned systems and military AI, and explicit support for Ukraine — sanctions, energy, the JATEC (Joint Analysis, Training and Education Centre) and NSATU (NATO Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine) initiatives.

What distinguishes this declaration from many that preceded it is its operational character. It does not confine itself to affirming principles — it identifies specific capability domains, financing mechanisms, and institutional frameworks in which the cooperation will materialize. The E5 has learned from the mistakes of previous European defense initiatives that remained abstract.

Portrait of each of the five: strengths and positions

Poland: the student who teaches the lesson

Within the E5, Poland occupies a particular position: it is the only member that has already reached 4.3% of GDP in defense spending — the highest level in the entire Atlantic alliance. Warsaw has become the student who teaches the lesson to its wealthier but less zealous Western partners. Poland's credibility in E5 negotiations rests on this consistency between words and deeds, between proclaimed commitments and voted budgets.

Poland has also demonstrated that rapid rearmament is politically possible in a democracy. The Polish national consensus on the necessity of strong defense — regardless of which party is in power — is a model for nations like Germany or France where defense budget debates remain more contentious. Warsaw has understood that national security is not a partisan issue — it is a condition of national existence.

The United Kingdom: post-Brexit military power

The United Kingdom, since Brexit, has sought to demonstrate that its departure from the EU does not weaken its commitment to European security. Its active participation in E5 — which it chairs or co-chairs depending on the format — is the most concrete manifestation of that commitment. London maintains one of Europe's only two independent nuclear capabilities, a high-quality expeditionary force, and intelligence services (MI6, GCHQ) whose capabilities are irreplaceable for the alliance.

The E5 declaration published by GOV.UK is symptomatic of this post-Brexit British diplomacy: the UK establishes itself as the natural secretariat of the E5 initiative, publishing the declaration on its own government channels, signaling its institutional centrality within this format. It is a way of showing that while London has left EU institutions, it remains at the heart of the continent's security.

France and Germany: the continental engine

Paris and Berlin: finally aligned on defense

The Franco-German relationship was long weakened by divergences over defense: France favored a more autonomous European defense posture, while Germany preferred NATO primacy and self-imposed budget constraints. Germany's reversal since 2022 and the progressive convergence of the two visions have created the conditions for deeper cooperation. The E5 declaration is the institutional expression of this rapprochement.

France brings to the E5 its long-range strike capability (SCALP/Storm Shadow cruise missiles, M51 nuclear ballistic missiles), its power projection (the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier), its intelligence services, and its tradition of autonomous strategic thinking. Germany brings its industrial might, its central position in Europe as a logistical hub, and its growing capabilities in armored systems and artillery.

Long-range strike capabilities: the priority domain

The joint development of European long-range precision strike capabilities is presented in the E5 declaration as an absolute priority. The objective is twofold: strengthen conventional deterrence against Russia outside the nuclear framework, and reduce dependence on American systems for precision strikes at strategic depth. These capabilities — cruise missiles, hypersonic systems, autonomous guidance systems — require industrial cooperation that the five nations cannot pursue effectively each on their own.

The European ITAR-free initiative is directly tied to this need: developing long-range strike systems without components subject to American ITAR restrictions would allow a freedom of use that Washington cannot block through component controls. This is the most concrete expression of strategic autonomy on the terrain of equipment.

Italy: the E5's Mediterranean pivot

Rome between NATO and the Mediterranean

Italy brings to the E5 its Mediterranean dimension — a strategic perspective on NATO's southern flank that the other, more northern and Atlantic-facing members do not naturally hold. Rome is on the front line of the migrations driven by African conflicts fed by Chinese and Russian drones, of tensions in the Mediterranean Sea, and of power balances in Libya and Tunisia. This southern dimension is essential to a complete picture of European security.

Italy also has a significant defense industry — Leonardo, Fincantieri, Oto Melara — with capabilities in naval aviation, defense electronics, and naval platforms. Its integration into the E5 reinforces the European defense industrial fabric with players who can contribute to joint programs in long-range strike and autonomous systems.

Italy's internal cohesion challenges

Italy's participation in the E5 is not without internal tensions. The governing coalition in Rome has components that look less enthusiastically on defense spending increases and unconditional support for Ukraine. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has maintained a pro-NATO and pro-Ukraine course that deserves to be recognized in the Italian political context, but internal pressures remain real.

Italy's participation in the June 24 E5 declaration is therefore also a politically courageous decision in the national context — it commits the Meloni government to a direction its electorate did not explicitly ask for. This is the kind of security leadership that transcends immediate electoral dynamics and deserves recognition as such.

The 82% of European defense spending: real weight

What 82% means in concrete power

The fact that the E5 represents 82% of European defense spending within NATO gives this group a unique decision-making and operational weight. When these five nations agree on a priority — air defense, long-range strike, autonomous systems — they can mobilize the budgets to finance it, the industries to produce it, and the armed forces to deploy it. Other European NATO members will naturally align with the standards and equipment chosen by the E5 group.

This concentration of European defense power is a double-edged sword. It is efficient — decisions taken by the five are automatically structuring decisions for the whole. But it is also potentially divisive if it creates an informal European directorate that decides for others without consulting them. E5 diplomacy must navigate carefully between decision-making efficiency and the inclusion of all members.

The SAFE instrument and common financing

France signed on June 17, 2026 a loan of €15 billion under the SAFE instrument (Security and Defence Fund for Europe), which forms part of the European Defence Fund mechanism. This common European financing represents an important step in pooling defense resources at the European level. It allows nations to finance defense acquisitions at advantageous rates, within a framework that promotes interoperability and coordinated purchasing.

The SAFE instrument is particularly valuable for E5 nations whose debt-to-GDP ratios constrain public spending — notably France and Italy. By supplementing national budgets with long-term European financing, it allows the defense spending targets to be met without exacerbating short-term budgetary tensions. This is Europe investing collectively in its own defense — a fundamental paradigm shift.

Operational priorities: air defense, drones, AI

Multi-layered air defense: the absolute priority

Among the priorities identified in the E5 declaration, air defense occupies a central place. Ukraine has demonstrated with brutal clarity that air defense is the limiting factor in a nation's survival under attack — and that interceptor missile stockpiles are depleted at a rate production capacity had not anticipated. The E5 seeks to build a multi-layered architecture — SAMP/T, Patriot, IRIS-T, laser capabilities — covering the full spectrum of aerial threats.

Coordinating national air defense systems is one of the most complex operational challenges. A Polish-American Patriot battery and a Franco-Italian-Saudi SAMP/T must be able to exchange tracking, targeting, and engagement data in real time. The standardization of data interfaces and communications protocols is a prerequisite for collective effectiveness — and that is precisely what the E5 wants to accelerate.

AI and unmanned systems: the future being purchased now

The E5 declaration explicitly identifies unmanned systems and military AI as priority investment domains. This is a direct acknowledgment of the lessons from the Ukrainian front and the Chinese threat documented in lot 8. Drones — ISR, strike, counter-UAS, logistics — have become indispensable to all military missions. AI-driven systems — precision guidance, image recognition, swarm management — multiply the effectiveness of these drones.

The five E5 nations each have national programs in these domains. The declaration's challenge is to coordinate these programs to avoid costly redundancies, harmonize standards, and develop interoperable systems. An AI guidance system jointly developed by five nations costs one-fifth of five separate national developments for results that are superior in terms of shared training data.

JATEC and NSATU: concrete support for Ukraine

Programs that make a difference on the ground

The E5 declaration explicitly includes support for NATO's JATEC (Joint Analysis, Training and Education Centre) and NSATU (NATO Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine) initiatives. These two programs are concrete levers of support for Ukraine that receive less attention than weapons deliveries but are just as fundamental to Ukrainian combat capability.

JATEC analyzes the lessons from combat in Ukraine and translates them into doctrines, training, and recommendations for allied armed forces. The tactical knowledge generated by years of total war is of inestimable value — and systematizing it, cataloguing it, and sharing it is a task the five E5 nations commit to supporting financially and in personnel.

Training Ukrainian soldiers in Europe

NSATU coordinates the training of Ukrainian soldiers on allied NATO territory. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian servicemen have been trained in Poland, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom on equipment they will subsequently use at the front. This training converts material deliveries into real combat capability — a Leopard 2 tank is useless without crews trained to use it under optimal conditions.

The E5's commitment to support JATEC and NSATU is a high-return investment. Every well-trained Ukrainian soldier is a multiplier for the effectiveness of the equipment delivered. And every lesson JATEC learns on the Ukrainian battlefield directly improves the doctrine of the five national armies that are part of the E5. Support for Ukraine is not only a moral imperative — it is strategically profitable for the allies themselves.

Putin's legacy: the unity he created against himself

The strategic irony of Russian aggression

There is a profound irony in the current situation: Vladimir Putin has created the European defense unity he was specifically trying to prevent. His aggression in Ukraine repulsed nations like Germany that clung to their economic neutrality and their energy ties with Moscow. It persuaded Nordic nations — Finland and Sweden — to join NATO. It produced the E5 declaration of June 24, 2026 that would not have existed had Putin chosen diplomacy over missiles.

Putin's strategy was to fragment the Western alliance, to use energy dependencies to create fault lines between allies, and to present Russia as an indispensable partner in European security. Five years of war later, the alliance is stronger than in 2021, European defense spending has exploded, and five major European powers are uniting in an unprecedented defense framework. This is a total strategic failure for Moscow.

The lesson for authoritarian regimes

The lesson is clear for all who observe: military coercion against democracies produces the opposite of its intended effects. It strengthens solidarities, mobilizes resources, and creates the political will that was absent in peacetime. Iran, North Korea, and China should meditate on this lesson by observing the fate of Putin's European strategy — a strategy that has transformed a relatively disarmed continent in 2021 into a fortress in accelerated rearmament by 2026.

This result is first and foremost the product of Ukrainian resistance — without Zelensky and his people's heroic defense, the story could have unfolded very differently. But it is also the product of the consistency and durability of Western support, of which the E5 today represents the most structured and most ambitious expression.

Ukraine's support in the E5 declaration: the most important paragraph

Sanctions, energy, military aid: the triptych

The E5 declaration integrates support for Ukraine across three dimensions: sanctions against Russia (with a commitment to maintain and strengthen them as necessary), Ukrainian energy security (assistance in rebuilding the power grid destroyed by Russian bombardment), and continuing military aid through NATO and bilateral mechanisms. This coherence across the different dimensions of support is precisely what Zelensky has always requested — not isolated promises, but systemic and durable support.

The commitment to maintain sanctions is particularly valuable at a moment when some voices in Europe — and in the United States — are suggesting easing economic pressure on Moscow to create diplomatic conditions. The E5 says no to that logic: sanctions are not a negotiating tool to be traded away — they are the legitimate and necessary response to violations of international law that do not deserve reward while awaiting a diplomatic resolution.

Ukraine in NATO: the question of timing

The E5 declaration remains deliberately cautious on the question of Ukraine's NATO membership — a subject on which the five nations do not yet have a perfectly aligned position and which raises complex legal and strategic questions. But the explicit commitment to JATEC and NSATU initiatives, support for collective defense measures, and the mention of "security guarantees" constitute the first building blocks of a transitional architecture pending formal membership.

The trajectory is clear even if the timeline is not: Ukraine in NATO is the objective; the intermediate steps are the JATEC/NSATU instruments and bilateral security guarantees. The E5 cannot promise a membership date without consensus from all 32 members. But it can create the conditions and habits of integration that will make formal accession natural when the moment comes.

Conclusion: The portrait of a Europe that takes charge of itself

A union of wills around shared values

The E5 declaration of June 24, 2026 is the portrait of five European nations that have chosen to take their strategic destiny in hand. France with its ambition for autonomy, the United Kingdom with its military power and pragmatism, Germany with its reconverted industrial capacity, Poland with its budgetary exemplarity and geographical experience of the Russian threat, Italy with its Mediterranean dimension — these five nations together form a constellation whose sum exceeds its parts.

This is not a European super-state. It is not a single army. It is something more subtle and potentially more durable: a network of strategic trust among sovereign nations that share values, security interests, and the conviction that their common future is worth defending collectively. This network is the best possible answer to Putin, Xi Jinping, and all those who were betting on European disunity.

The work that remains

Let us be clear-eyed: this declaration is a beginning, not an accomplishment. Translating political commitments into operational capabilities takes years, massive investment, and bureaucratic discipline that European institutions and national ministerial cultures have not always demonstrated. The road from the June 2026 declaration to shared operational capabilities in 2030 is long and strewn with political, industrial, and diplomatic obstacles.

But the direction is right. The will is there. And the world in 2026 does not afford us the luxury of hesitation. The freedom and security of European democracies are defended now, with the capabilities we build today. The E5 declaration of June 24 is the best available proof of that.

Signed Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency box

Method and sources

This profile draws on the dated sources from lot 8: GOV.UK (June 24, 2026), IRIA News (June 20, 2026), Straits Times (June 26, 2026), NATO.int (June 25, 2026), EU Perspectives (June 23, 2026), and EU Insider (June 23, 2026). The E5 declaration cited is the official document published by GOV.UK. All numerical facts come from the listed sources.

The portraits of each E5 nation are analyses based on public information. The columnist acknowledges that complex elements of domestic politics in each country — notably in Italy — could not be developed in detail. These limitations are inherent to the compact article format.

Editorial positioning

Maxime Marquette supports the project of collective European defense represented by the E5. He is pro-Ukraine, pro-NATO, and in favor of European strategic autonomy as a complement — not a substitute — for the Atlantic alliance. His analysis is deliberately optimistic about the potential of the E5 while acknowledging the execution challenges.

This optimism is deliberate and explained: in a context where defeatist pessimism is easy and common, it is more useful to document real progress and encourage its continuation than to systematically emphasize shortcomings. The columnist believes in democracies' capacity to improve under pressure — recent history gives him evidence for that view.

Sources

Primary sources

GOV.UK — E5 Leaders' Statement: June 24, 2026

IRIA News — NATO defense ministers meet in Brussels to discuss defense spending, Ukraine war and alliance reforms — June 20, 2026

Secondary sources

Straits Times — NATO's Rutte says billions in defense contracts to be announced at summit — June 26, 2026

NATO.int — Rutte meets Trump: Europe stepping up defense spending — June 25, 2026

EU Perspectives — Paris Eurosatory 2026: the future of defense — June 23, 2026

EU Insider — European defense ITAR-free: ReArm Europe — June 23, 2026