Weimar Triangle could be used to boost Europe’s defence, experts say

Germany, France, and Poland are pitching the ‘Weimar Triangle’ as a new centrepiece for Europe’s joint defence in response to concerning signals from the United States, and while experts see potential for synergies, they warn that the three-way approach will hardly suffice.

Increased defence collaboration between France, Germany and Poland was a hot topic in meetings between leaders of all three countries on Monday (12 February) after former US President Donald Trump’s controversial comments on America’s future engagement in NATO.

With a pro-EU government now in place in Poland, foreign ministers and heads of government revived the quasi-dormant Weimar Triangle, a Franco-German-Polish dialogue format, to facilitate greater self-reliance in terms of Europe’s defence.

This might just be what the EU needs as the threat of NATO-sceptical Trump returning to power in 2025 looms large, but experts doubt that the Weimar Triangle can do the heavy lifting all on its own.

“A US withdrawal from NATO or a scaling back of activities would be irreplaceable […] in the short term,” Rafael Loss, a defence expert at the European Council of Foreign Relations (ECFR) think tank, told Euractiv.

Without the US, “NATO would above all lack a credible deterrent” against Moscow, Loss added.

EU defence has seen consecutive growth over the past years – from research and development to joint production – especially since Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in February 2022.

However, the EU would not be able to palliate Washington’s presence fast enough should Russia probe its defence within five to eight years as European governments fear, Loss warned.

“This would require an enormous increase in defence spending beyond the countries of the Weimar Triangle,” he added, pointing to deficiencies in areas such as transport aircraft and military intelligence and logistics.

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Where Weimar can help

Nonetheless, the ‘Weimar Triangle’ was a much-needed vehicle to bring the three most important European armies “closer where views diverge,” Laurent Warlouzet, an EU scholar at the Sorbonne, told Euractiv.

“Poland buys a lot of [military] equipment from the US and South Korea (…), and the Polish do not believe in France’s [nuclear] deterrence,” he noted, with France’s failure to support Poland against the invasion of Nazi Germany in 1939 still vivid in collective memory.

A format like that “could bring pro-US Warsaw closer to protectionist France, driven by the imperative of strengthening the EU’s strategic autonomy should Trump get into office again in 2024,” Warlouzet added.

Loss agreed, pointing to synergies in military logistics: “The transport axis between Germany, Poland and the Baltics is very important [and] could be strengthened” with growing French involvement.

Intensified dialogue may also improve the mood between the partners, which had previously soured between them.

“If Warsaw-Paris relations have been cold since 2016, temperatures with Berlin were polar,” Adam Hsakou, a European defence expert at the German Marshall Fund, noted in the run-up to Monday’s meetings.

Explainer: How to make sense of the EU's defence funds and programmes

The EU’s defence programmes and funds have multiplied after the start of Russia’s war in Ukraine, to boost collaboration in different steps of an equipment’s life cycle: research, development, production, acquisition, and transfer to third countries. 

Tusk flirts with Germany’s Sky Shield

Still, the collaboration would need to overcome profound obstacles to have an impact, among which Loss names the notorious slowness of European defence collaborations.

Franco-German cooperation alone has been hard enough, Warlouzet noted, pointing to the glacial pace at which the development of the Future Combat Air System (FCAS), a European fighter jet programme, has moved.

Moreover, the three governments appear unsure of how to move the format from a talk shop to a robust defence alliance.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz refused to name specific defence projects where the three countries could collaborate when asked at a joint press conference with his Polish counterpart Donald Tusk on Monday.

Tusk hinted, though, that Poland would consider joining the European Sky Shield Initiative, a German-led coalition that is aiming to assemble a European air defence system.

“We also spoke today about the need to intensify our cooperation bilaterally and in Europe, including air defence,” he said.

Thus, while Warlouzet warned that “spectacular progress” should not be expected, he lauded that “at least a new Weimar dynamism is being launched”.

Loss noted that the “unprecedented agreement between the governments in Germany, France, and Poland (…) that Russia is currently the biggest threat” appeared like a promising start.

However, he added, Paris, Berlin, and Warsaw would not be able to go the way without collaboration from Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom, and partners in South-Eastern Europe – and without America.

[Edited by Alice Taylor]

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