For many years, EU
defence policy was characterized by low law and high politics, with the
supranational domain muted by intergovernmental prerogatives. The Russian
invasion of Ukraine marked a turning point, ushering in several innovations,
including an awakening of the supranational domain of EU defence policy. This article
examines the supranational turn in EU defence policy, the instruments used by
the EU to shape Member States’ military policies and the inevitable spillover
of this process into the intergovernmental domain of defence. It argues that
the EU is shaping defence policy through the use of three defence-related
competences – industrial policy, the internal market and technological
development policy – and in doing so, it is outreaching the intergovernmental
method. To this end, the EU consistently relies on the concept of economies of
scale to mobilize all available legal bases, and in particular, to overcome
market fragmentation, stimulate the defence industry and develop new
technologies. To make its instruments effective, the EU relies on the
well-established practice of financial conditionality, using various channels
such as grants from the EU budget, loans backed by the EU’s budgetary headroom
and relaxed fiscal rules under the Stability and Growth Pact. Taken together,
the supranational turn displays defence as a prototype of a European public
good that can be efficiently provided on a central EU level, but that is
increasingly at odds with traditional notions of national sovereignty.