EU Regulatory Incentives for Armament Cooperation: Lessons from Directive 2009/81/EC

Since the December 2013 European Council, armament cooperation is caught into a new impetus at EU level which focuses on incentives as decisive policy tools to foster such cooperation. Incentives are generally thought to be of fiscal (tax exemption) or budgetary (subvention) nature but they can also be comprehended from a regulatory perspective. For instance, article 13 (c) of directive 2009/81/EC which regulates defence procurements offers an incentive for cooperation by eliminating regulatory obligations for Member States procuring on a cooperative basis instead of nationally. Such incentivizing mechanisms should not be neglected given their low cost but their (actual and potential) effectiveness needs to be assessed.

The ambition of this comment is to offer some lines of thinking on the nature of regulatory incentives and the conditions for their effectiveness from the article 13 (c) example…