The European Union has expanded the European Defense Agency’s annual budget by one third. EU defense ministers made the decision earlier this month, surging the budget from €22 million to €32 million (us$32.7 million to $47.6 million). Defense officials are hoping the increased funds for the agency will bolster the EU’s military capabilities, particularly the elements of strategic transport, force protection and intelligence, EUobserver reported November 20.

EU members have a combined defense budget of approximately $234 billion, second to the U.S. Department of Defense, which spends more than $400 billion. However, as a whole, European militaries overlap each other and lack important capabilities including rapid response, precision ordinance and real-time telemetry. The European Defense Agency (eda) is in charge of eliminating redundancy, molding national defense into a more cohesive whole and developing new capabilities.

“Investing in the right technology is critical for the future of European defense, and the strategy is exactly in line with the absolute requirement for us to spend more, spend better and spend more together,” Javier Solana, the head of EU foreign policy as well as the eda,said.

Alexander Weis, eda chief executive, said, “[T]he decisions have put in place further building blocks for our common work of making Europe’s armed forces and military budgets fit for the challenges of the 21st century, which we must face together.”

France called for a three-year budget to be set in order to give the agency more financial stability, but Britain vetoed the idea.

The increase in the eda budget follows an address by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to the United States Congress on November 7, where he spoke about how a stronger Europe was coming, and how America must rely on this stronger Europe (emphasis ours):

Allow me to express one last conviction: Trust Europe.In this unstable, dangerous world, the United States of America needs a strong, determined Europe. … Soon [the EU] will have a stable president and a more powerful high representative for foreign and security policy, and it must now reactivate the construction of its military capacities.

The French president received a standing ovation following his 45-minute address—a speech in which he not only recalled at length the history of warm American-French relations, but also called on the U.S. to support a European foreign policy including a strengthened military.

Under the guise of being an ally to the U.S. in the fight against terrorism, Europe is developing the seeds of a superpower, pushing ahead with rearmament uncontested.

The United States still dominates the rest of the world in military spending and power. However, the trend of increasing European military spending is strong and growing. With German-dominated European history and biblical forecasting in mind, watch for Europe to become the world’s newest superpower.