Europe Ain't Getting Better: Defense Budgets, Personnel, R&D All Down, Says CSIS

[unhappycamper]

http://defense.aol.com/2012/12/19/europe-aint-getting-better-defense-budgets-personnel-randd-all/



Europe Ain't Getting Better: Defense Budgets, Personnel, R&D All Down, Says CSIS
By Otto Kreisher
Published: December 19, 2012

WASHINGTON: You think US defense spending is a mess? At least we're not Europe.

A study out Tuesday from the Center for Strategic and International Studies warned that a decade of shrinking forces and funding is likely to continue, threatening a European defense industrial base already burdened by inefficiencies, national rivalries, and governmental tendencies to treat defense spending as "a jobs program."

In order for that industrial base to survive, the European Union must implement already approved regulatory reforms that were intended to open the defense market to competition and promote better collaboration, and it must take advantage of growing opportunities for sales outside of Europe, the CSIS study said. (Currently, the US dominates the international arms trade).

While US defense spending is declining from its post-9/11 peak, Europe is already back down to pre-9/11 levels. The report showed a drop in total defense expenditures by the EU countries from 263.1 billion Euros in 2001 to $220 billion Euros in 2011, a decline of 1.8 percent over a decade. But the annual decline accelerated in the last three years of that period to 3.2 percent.