{"id":463981,"date":"2026-09-04T10:18:36","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T08:18:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2026\/09\/04\/essere-pronti-al-2030-in-difesa-per-la-corte-del-conti-ue-sara-difficile\/"},"modified":"2026-09-04T11:51:21","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T09:51:21","slug":"defence-readiness-by-2030-the-european-court-of-auditors-sees-it-challenging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2026\/09\/04\/defence-readiness-by-2030-the-european-court-of-auditors-sees-it-challenging\/","title":{"rendered":"Defence readiness by 2030? The European Court of Auditors sees it challenging"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brussels \u2013 \u201cDespite ambitious EU plans and rising spending, achieving defence readiness by 2030 is challenging.<\/strong>\u201d The EU Court of Auditors has burst onto the political debate on security and defence with a report<\/a> that seems to call everything into question, reducing the EU\u2019s strategy to mere proclamations, announcements and little else. The doubts the auditors in Luxembourg raised are rooted in the common foreign policy, which is by no means truly European but \u201ccharacterised by a complex institutional framework and a multilevel governance structure.\u201d This translates into \u201c significant coordination challenges <\/strong>across the different players and increases the risk of overlapping responsibilities.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n

The Court of Auditors goes straight to the point: the EU\u2019s entire strategy \u2013 Readiness 2030, that is, the plan to \u2018Re-arm Europe\u2019 \u2013 renamed for reasons of image and political expediency<\/a> \u2013 risks resulting in a waste of public resources. Precisely because of the national nature of defence and a management approach that remains heavily government-led, \u201cinsufficient coordination among various EU funding streams, as well as between EU and national funding, together with the absence of an effective, top-down EU planning process may lead to fragmented investments, duplication or persistent capability gaps.\u201d<\/strong> <\/p>\n

The EU Court of Auditors also identifies \u201cimplementation risks\u201d arising from a market that is insufficiently developed to meet new needs and demands. Shortages “of skilled staff<\/strong>\u201d cannot be ruled out, particularly in light of young people\u2019s lack of interest in heavy industry<\/a>, and this, together with \u201cbottlenecks of materials\u201d and the \u201chigh inflation<\/a> rate<\/strong>\u201d stemming from  high energy costs resulting from the war in Iran, \u201cmakes it difficult to utilise the allocated funds.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2026\/02\/03\/critical-raw-materials-court-of-auditors-brings-eu-back-down-to-earth-2030-targets-appear-out-of-reach\/<\/a><\/p>\n

 In essence, the strategy the European Commission presented with great fanfare appears to be rushed and flawed, paying little attention to the structural limitations of the EU and its political and institutional architecture. For this reason, \u201ccapitalising on new opportunities and heeding the existing risks is key,\u201d stressed Marek Opio\u0142a<\/strong>, the Member of the European Court of Auditors responsible for the report. \u201cThe goal of defence readiness by 2030 remains challenging,\u201d he reiterated. True strategic autonomy in defence, he notes, may prove more challenging in light of \u201congoing major constraints, such as fragmented national systems, industrial bottlenecks, slow political coordination, and reliance on the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reporting and debt: the other critical factors in \u2018Readiness 2030\u2019<\/h4>\n

\n

There are also at least two further critical issues in the twelve-point strategy to revitalise defence and the defence industry: one concerns expenditure controls and transparency; the other regards government debt and the conflict between the security agenda and the Stability Pact and budgetary rules. As regards financial audits, the auditors in Luxembourg point out that, in themselves, “the financial accountability arrangements are equally complex, and vary depending on the funding instrument and entity involved.\u201d To complicate matters further, \u201cthe absence of an audit mandate for all bodies and instruments involved limits the ECA\u2019s ability to fully perform its role of external auditor.”<\/strong> <\/p>\n

Concerning public finances, \u201cThe increasing use of debt-financed defence spending, EU-backed loans (through the SAFE programme, Ed.) and the activation of flexibility clauses may undermine fiscal sustainability by slowing public debt reduction<\/strong>, increasing contingent liabilities and placing additional pressure on the EU budget headroom, in the absence of proper provisioning.\u201d The EU therefore risks undermining the Stability Pact reform and efforts to correct macroeconomic imbalances, further compromising national governments\u2019 fiscal positions, spending, and room to manoeuvre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite the name chosen for the sector\u2019s recovery plan, auditors in Luxembourg warn that it will be impossible to honour the commitments. Inflation, dependence on the US and multi-tiered management are all factors weighing heavily. The key issues are debt and transparency<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":494,"featured_media":463967,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[30809],"tags":[27336,26763,33117,25745,33394],"class_list":["post-463981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-defence-security","tag-corte-dei-conti-en","tag-readiness-2030","tag-safety-en","tag-ue"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/494"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463981"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":463982,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463981\/revisions\/463982"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}