Reinhold Brender / Dec 2025
Image: Shutterstock
As EU governments scramble to agree a €165 billion loan for Ukraine using Russian assets before the 18–19 December 2025 European Council meeting, Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever continues to block a deal. At the same time, a parallel budget battle is intensifying. Amid rising defence spending, the Commission's proposal of a €200 billion Global Europe instrument for 2028–2034 faces calls for deep cuts. This instrument would be the Union's main vehicle for development, climate finance, and global partnerships.
The temptation to address urgent security needs by raiding long-term development cooperation would be the wrong lesson from this moment.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned the world about precisely this kind of imbalance in September 2025 – a warning Europe cannot afford to ignore. His report, The Security We Need, is blunt: worldwide military spending reached $2.7 trillion in 2024 – roughly the combined GDP of all African countries – while the financing gap for the Sustainable Development Goals has surged to $4 trillion annually.
The UN report is clear: excessive military spending does not guarantee peace. Rising defence budgets crowd out investments in diplomacy, prevention, and climate resilience – the true foundations of long-term stability.
Fewer than one-fifth of SDG targets are on track. That failure is not just a moral problem – it fuels instability, forced migration, and climate-driven shocks that Europe ultimately pays for. Crises in fragile states rarely remain contained: food insecurity in the Sahel, climate shocks in the Horn of Africa, and economic collapse spill over through displacement and irregular migration, straining European borders and cohesion.
For Europe as elsewhere, the answer is balance, not a choice between defence and development. Military readiness cannot compensate for failing development or climate-induced instability. Without human-centred security – grounded in dignity, opportunity, and resilience – crises will outpace management capacity. The report states: "There is no peace without sustainable development, and no sustainable development without peace."
The AU-EU Summit in Luanda in late November illustrated Europe's recognition of this interdependence. The EU and the African Union reaffirmed "substantial" EU support for African peace operations through the European Peace Facility while simultaneously committing to development cooperation on debt relief, infrastructure, and climate finance. Yet this integrated approach – security investment alongside development partnerships – is threatened by Europe's looming budget crisis.
A second lesson is geopolitical: Europe's ability to engage with the strategically essential emerging and middle-income countries now hinges on credible support for sustainable development.
American political scientist G. John Ikenberry describes the current global order as a contest among three worlds: the Global West, the Global East (China and Russia), and the Global South (Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia). These are "global" actors because they can shape international rules and norms. All three compete to define the rules and institutions that govern the international order.
The Global South is the decisive swing coalition in this systemic competition. Its influence rests on demographic weight, resource wealth, and economic dynamism. According to projections by the World Bank, the IMF and others, these economies are on track to account for the majority of global growth and a rising share of global economic output in the medium term. Whoever secures the South as a partner gains shaping power in the international system.
Scepticism toward Europe has deepened. Many developing and emerging economies perceive double standards: swift, stiff sanctions against Russia contrasted with hesitant appeals over Gaza and Sudan. This inconsistency fuels doubts about European reliability and makes it harder to win partners in the South. Unmet development promises compound the problem.
Development cooperation is therefore central to Europe's geopolitical strategy. Delivering on Southern priorities – climate finance, operational loss-and-damage mechanisms, debt restructuring for SDG investment, and support for fairer representation in global governance – can build Europe's credibility to lead coalitions for revitalised multilateralism. Otherwise, it risks ceding influence to Russia, China, or an enlarged BRICS.
The next EU budget will reveal whether Europe can redefine security in practice – as traditional donors retreat. The US has begun dismantling USAID and frozen or reprogrammed billions in aid commitments; OECD data show that global official development assistance fell by 9% in 2024 and could drop another 9-17% this year. As others step back, Europe's choices carry outsized weight. The EU and its member states contribute 42% of global development aid.
Rising national defence budgets are eroding political will for common external action, translating into pressure in Brussels to slash Global Europe first. The "frugal" member states – led by the Netherlands, Sweden, and Austria – argue that European taxpayers shoulder a disproportionate load while the US retreats and China pursues its agenda. But the question is not whether the burden is fair; it is whether Europe can afford not to lead.
Development partnerships prevent crises that cost far more in emergency response, migration management, and lost influence. Instability in the Sahel and the dissolution of France's former partnerships in Africa directly impact European security. Abandon this terrain, and China and Russia fill it with infrastructure loans and military deals that reshape global alignments against European interests.
Europe made ambitious commitments in November: the 66.25–72.5% emissions-reduction pledge at COP30 in Belém and commitments on climate, energy access, and African debt relief at the G20 in Johannesburg. Yet translating commitments into budget reality is threatened by the frugals. Dutch Finance Minister Eelco Heinen declared the Commission's overall budget proposal "dead on arrival". Defence investment is indispensable. Yet a world where development collapses will be profoundly unsafe – regardless of Europe's defence spending.
The 18–19 December European Council meeting will test this understanding. EU leaders face a choice: reinforce the imbalance Guterres warned against, or correct it. That means ring-fencing the external-action envelope while addressing growing defence needs. Defence and development are complementary investments in global stability, which underpins Europe's security. In practice, this requires financing Ukraine and higher defence spending primarily through joint borrowing and new EU own resources, not by cannibalising the Global Europe instrument.
