Funding for the European Union’s (EU) military mobility fund has run dry, with no finances available for additional projects in the final two years of a multi-year settlement to improve defence logistics and the transit of military equipment across member states’ borders.
In an extensive audit of the EU military mobility programme, published on 5 February 2025 by the European Court of Auditors (ECA), detailed some of the issues with the implementation of the EU’s aspirations. Moving military capabilities quickly and efficiently across Europe is a critical aspect of properly defending the continent from potential threats.
The ECA determined that the EU’s military mobility policy had evolved since a first action plan in 2018. For the first time, its 2021–2027 budget set aside a dedicated amount for military and civilian dual-use transport infrastructure projects.
The game changer was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which turned the bloc’s strategic need for military mobility into a matter of urgency. Under time pressure, the EU published its second action plan in November 2022.
In 2023 EU member states spent a combined €280bn ($291.7bn) on defence, with the figure expected to rise to more than €300bn for 2024. The projects under the EU military mobility programme are 50% co-funded by the bloc and the member states.
Also damning was the scale of the €1.7bn funding set aside for dual military-civil use projects, compared to the overall €27bn set aside for civil-only mobility programmes.
However, the entirety of the €1.7bn ($1.7bn) EU’s military mobility budget has already been allocated, part-way through the funding period.
“There is no money in the pot,” said ECA president Tony Murphy in a press briefing attended by Army Technology, adding that, as a result, there could be a gap until the next funding period was agreed for 2027 and beyond.
“[An EU military mobility budget of] €1.7bn at the level of spending of member states is peanuts,” Murphy said.
Dual-use military-civil funding was “front-loaded” over the funding period, ECA officials said, leaving nothing left for the latter half of the timeframe. From the funding, 95 separate programmes across 21 member states were provided for, averaging around €18m per project.
In addition, one unnamed EU member state funding the first two stages of a military mobility programme, only to not apply for the finances to complete the critical third and final stage. Cross border cooperation was also limited, with just two programmes between Sweden and Finland, and Romania and Bulgaria, intended to harmonise transit of military equipment from one country to the next.
Further, little attention appears to have been given to the best use of the resources that were available for 2022 and 2023 funding requests. In the east of the EU, dual-use projects were approved in countries such as Germany, Latvia, and Lithuania, but none in southern countries like Greece.
ECA issues recommendations to EU military mobility
In its report, the ECA provided six recommendations for the European Commission and European External Action Service to enact in order to ensure future military mobility funding better provides for the necessary infrastructure improvements.
These include: improve the governance arrangements for military mobility in the EU; monitor and report on the progress of each action included in Action Plan 2.0; assess the possibility of using Connecting Europe Facility transport calls to finance dual-use infrastructure projects under the current MFF (2021-2027); take steps to improve the predictability of possible funding for military mobility under the post-2027 MFF; improve the selection process for dual-use infrastructure projects under the post-2027 MFF; and make the design of the EU’s military mobility actions more focused.
The first progress report for the action plan, published in November 2023, did not systematically include progress information, including on issues encountered, for each action but was more of a list of what had happened in terms of military mobility in the EU during the previous year. Member states were not asked to specifically give feedback via a formalised process on their invitations to act, the ECA found.
Overall, the ECA said that it found only four of the 29 key actions at EU level “could be considered completed”, while the vast majority remained a work ongoing.
“There is a lack of indicators and specific targets (with corresponding date), to be achieved for all actions. We therefore cannot give a precise overall assessment of the progress made on Action Plan 2.0, beyond indicating that implementation of actions is ongoing, and progress has been variable,” stated the ECA audit.
