Defence factories are running hot across Europe, with order books swelling and export licences hitting historic highs.
According to the latest Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) report out this week, imports of major arms by European states jumped 155% between 2015-19 and 2020-24, while global arms flows remained essentially unchanged, slipping just 0.6%. Declines across every other region essentially cancelled out the increase in shipments to Europe and the Americas.
At the same time, Europe’s export heavyweights – France, Germany, and Italy – have been steadily consolidating their dominance in the arms industry.
The trend doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Europe is now navigating a rapidly shifting security landscape. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, coupled with renewed hand-wringing in Brussels and across NATO about strategic autonomy, has turbo-charged the defence trade. The continent is not only shipping more weapons, it’s buying more too.
The result is a European defence economy that talks de-escalation in press conferences while it signs billion-euro contracts behind closed doors.
A booming business
The United States still dominates global arms exports, accounting for around 43% of all transfers in 2020-24. The next-largest exporter is France, at roughly 9.6% of global exports in that period, while Germany follows at about 5.6%. Combined, Western Europe and the US account for nearly 73 % of global exports.
The corporate winners are easy to spot. In Europe, Italy’s Leonardo, France’s Thales Group, and Germany’s Rheinmetall and Airbus Defence & Space all appear near the top of SIPRI’s Top-100 arms-producing companies. They constitute the most profitable non-U.S. producers, with the global top-hundred generating roughly $632 billion in arms revenues in 2023.
Their annual filings are even blunter: record revenues, record backlogs, multi-year contracts stretching deep into the 2030s.
Where are the weapons landing?
The destinations fall into three broad categories.
First comes Europe itself. Ukraine, defending itself against Russia’s full-scale invasion that began almost four years ago, became the world’s largest arms importer from 2020-24, accounting for a staggering 8.8% of all global imports.
European NATO countries have also re-armed at speed, turning the continent into one of the defence industry’s most lucrative growth markets. Interestingly enough, the US supplied 64% of arms imports by European NATO states in 2020-24, up from 52% in 2015-19.
Second, rising purchases by states in Asia and the Middle East – notably India, Qatar, and the Gulf monarchies – account for large value transfers of jets, ships, and missile systems, even as the region’s total dipped by 20% between 2015-19 and 2020-24.
Lastly, the third category, where Europe’s peace narrative collapses.
Egypt and Sudan expose how European and allied weapons keep shaping violent conflicts despite official restraint. Egypt – still the world’s 8th-largest arms importer – shifted to buying European warships that made up 65% of its 2020–24 purchases, even as its overall imports fell 44%. Sudan is even starker: Amnesty International documented French-equipped vehicles and UAE-made armoured carriers used by RSF forces in 2023–24, while The Washington Post traced drones and missiles entering the war through regional backchannels.
The European External Action Service (EEAS)’s own 26th Annual Report on Arms Exports admits tracking final end-users is “difficult” because of complex supply chains and confidentiality. Europe’s destination map tells a blunt story: the Continent’s weapons don’t just support allies; they shape conflicts, entrench alliances and fuel procurement races from Kyiv to Doha to New Delhi.
The political contradiction
National secrecy rules, commercial confidentiality, and multi-country subcontracting obscure the real picture. The result is a system where governments publicly trumpet human-rights commitments while quietly approving exports to states seemingly incompatible with that rhetoric, exemplified by Germany’s recent lifting of the arms export ban on Israel, set to come into effect on the 24th of November.
Europe’s arms industry is profitable, protected, and increasingly essential to national industrial strategies. There is also fear that cutting exports would hit jobs, regional economies, and balance sheets, making governments reluctant to tighten the tap. And as long as geopolitical crises keep demand sky-high, the incentives to look the other way remain powerful.
For now, Europe’s peace rhetoric and its booming weapons trade coexist – not uncomfortably, but symbiotically. The beneficiaries are clear: large defence companies, national treasuries, and export-heavy member states. The losers, critics warn, are transparency, credibility, and the civilians living in the world’s most fragile regions.
(cm, cp)
