Autonomy through Coproduction?
NATO industrial integration and the limits of European sovereignty
NATO’s new transatlantic coproduction initiatives promise to expand defence output, shorten supply chains and establish additional manufacturing and sustainment capacity in Europe. Yet the physical location of production does not determine whether a capability is sovereign. European factories may remain dependent on foreign intellectual property, source code, export licences, certification authority, maintenance data, critical components and political approvals. The central question is therefore not whether American-designed systems are assembled or serviced in Europe, but whether European governments and companies acquire the legal, technological and industrial control required to produce, modify, sustain and employ them under conditions of political or supply disruption.
The report first reconstructs the strategic and institutional rationale behind NATO’s emerging coproduction model and the European Union’s parallel pursuit of defence-industrial autonomy. It then examines the legal, financial and procurement conditions established by EDIP, SAFE and United States export-control rules. The industrial analysis distinguishes final assembly, licensed production, component manufacturing, sovereign maintenance, technology transfer, design-authority control and independent production capability. These criteria are applied to concrete arrangements involving ATACMS, Stinger, AMRAAM, PAC-3, Abrams and Barracuda-500M, before assessing when NATO interoperability and EU industrial policy reinforce one another and when coproduction instead consolidates a more efficient form of strategic dependency.