Alistair MacDonald

For Europe to get defence sovereignty, it really needs its traditional military powers, which is really Britain and France, to step up the plate.

At the moment, it's only really Germany.

That's right, Luke.

It was presented to him earlier this week, and in it, it promised only to increase military spending to 2.68% GDP by 2030.

Of course, the UK has agreed with NATO that it will increase its spending to 3.5%.

Healy's argument is very much that these are very uncertain times.

And he would point to what's been happening in Ukraine and broader security threats, as you've seen in the Middle East, where Europe's been a complete bystander.

And so Europe's looking for this defense sovereignty.

The idea is that for Europe to get defense sovereignty, it really needs its traditional military powers, which is really Britain and France, to step up to the plate.

At the moment, it's only really Germany.

which is obviously a very large economy, the Nordics and Scandinavians and Poland, but the Nordics and the Baltics really increasing by a lot, but they're obviously much smaller economies.

Well, Europe is raising its defense spending quite considerably.

Last year alone, Europe's defense spending increased by 16%.

These come from figures from SIPRI, which is a thick tank.

That outpaced the 3% increase in spending globally and an 8% real-term decline in the US.

The problem for Europe, of course, is that it's not really the sum of its parts.

It's not one whole wallet as the US's is.

It's fragmented.

So that's sort of why you do need the traditional...

European big military spenders, which is, as I say, mainly France and the United Kingdom.