Greece is no longer just buying French weapons. The ISDP brief argues that Athens is becoming a test case for Europe’s defence pillar – a country using French arms, French political guarantees and deeper industrial cooperation to build deterrence in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Europe is safer than it was during the 2022 gas panic – but TEPSA warns that safer does not mean secure. The EU has cut Russian gas, diversified suppliers, filled storage more professionally and accelerated clean-energy deployment. That is real progress.

Germany says it wants to build Europe’s strongest conventional army. The World Politics Review analysis warns that Berlin is still nowhere near proving it can turn that promise into soldiers, units and real wartime capacity.

Germany has published the first military strategy in the Bundeswehr’s history – and the FPRI analysis treats it as both a milestone and a warning. Berlin is finally admitting that Russia is the central threat, that territorial defence is back, and that Germany must become a serious military actor at the heart of NATO.

Romania is about to become one of Europe’s most important new gas players – and CEPA argues the EU should stop treating that as a narrow national windfall. With Black Sea production from the Neptun Deep project expected to start in 2027, Romania may have surplus gas at exactly the moment Europe is trying to finish its break with Russian supply.

France and Italy have just staged a show of renewed unity at Antibes, but the IRIS note points to the awkward omission: the Indo-Pacific was missing from the serious agenda. That is not a minor diplomatic gap. It is a warning that two major EU powers are still treating the world’s central strategic arena as secondary business.

NATO’s European members are finally spending serious money on defence. The IISS analysis says the rise is real, rapid and historically significant: European NATO budgets are expected to climb by almost 10 percent in 2026, reaching around $639 billion. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, nominal spending has surged by more than 90 percent.