The EU Commission and the European multilevel security state in the defence industrial sector: between market regulation and ownership

The European Commission has been playing an increasingly important role in the defence sector over the last two decades. Just like for other policies, the European Commission’s mission creep has proceeded through its use of its regulatory powers relating to the internal market. Its role has therefore been conceived as one of market-making based on regulation. However, while the Commission’s first initiatives fit this conception of regulation, recent attempts testify to the political development of a positive security state at the European level. This article will demonstrate that the European Commission assumes regulatory functions, but these have become combined with more positive interventions in the industrial sector: its most recent European Defence Fund (EDF) represents a supranational regulatory means to bolster state ownership at national levels. The opportunity of the EU acquiring military equipment in its name has been debated but abandoned: this illustrates the politically sensitive question of military ownership and the subsequent exclusion of the EU from stateness. This move from market making alone towards a combination of regulation and positive security state policy instruments in the European multilevel governance is best explained by the European Commission’s evolving understanding of the EU’s international role and strategies. Learning from past failures at influencing states’ behaviour through regulatory means, as well as the emergence of a “developmental mindset” among some EU Commission’s staff in the mid-2010s have conducted the supranational actor to move away from a purely market-oriented strategy, towards a combination of regulatory and positive state policy instruments.