The Bubble · Reading Room
Brussels · 23 June 2026
Weekly policy digest
Reading
Room
Room
Think tank briefs, made readable · 5 min · Issue #26
● This week’s lead · Defence
Europe’s defence money is rising — but still badly fragmented
The sharpest finding is that Europe is spending more on defence, yet still may miss
readiness by 2030 because money is scattered across national budgets and slow-buying
rules. Joint procurement remains below 20%, while the EU’s current tools cover only a
small slice of total spending. The security gap is widening faster than Europe’s ability
to buy together.
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Key figure
<20%
Joint procurement remains below 20%, even as defence outlays rose ~30% in real terms from 2021 to 2024.
Source
European Policy Centre — Defence Financing in the EU: Needs, Ambitions and Progress
Also this week
The G7 is losing its edge on China
The G7 now talks a lot about economic security, but still cannot agree on how to confront
Chinese overcapacity. The Évian summit offered some cooperation on Ukraine and critical
minerals, yet Trump-era trade shocks have made the group less reliable — pushing the EU
toward a wider web of partners to protect supply chains.
Brexit didn’t kill Eurosceptics. It taught them a better tactic
Brexit made outright exit look too costly, so sovereigntist parties stopped promising
to leave and started trying to reshape the EU from inside. With the next EU budget
needing unanimity, internal sabotage may prove harder to stop than another exit campaign.
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