Can the New European-Australian Security Partnership Gain Traction?
A security and defense partnership (SDP) agreement with Australia, signed during European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s visit to Canberra in March 2026, anticipates deeper strategic cooperation between the two continents. But that will emerge only if the two sides can overcome underlying constraints and, in Europe’s case, better connect Brussels with the Indo-Pacific priorities and actions of its member states.
The SDP naturally focuses on domains in which Brussels has greatest agency. It seeks to increase information-sharing; enhance mutual capacity and resilience in the face of complex security threats; deepen cooperation to combat online radicalization and terrorism financing; establish a space security dialogue; and create new defense procurement opportunities for Australian and European firms.
Animating and sustaining strategic cooperation has been a persistent challenge for Europe and Australia. As one Australian commentator noted, “Previous EU-Australia initiatives have stalled due to limited delivery capacity, a lack of tangible projects and a prioritization of other partners and partnerships.… To succeed, the partnership requires visible and practical initiatives.” Both sides also need to increase their policy and programmatic bandwidth to drive more substantive collaboration.
The EU seems genuine in its ambition to follow through on tangible initiatives. The SDP agreement was followed, in May, by the first high level EU-Australia security and defense dialogue. The EU lead, European External Action Service Managing Director for Peace, Security and Defense Benedikta von Seherr-Thoss, affirmed that the EU wanted to fill the SDP “with life”. Von Seherr-Thoss identified as early priorities shared situational awareness; cooperation on cyber, disinformation, and hybrid threats; collaboration on capacity-building with regional partners; and closer engagement on sanctions measures and broader multilateral action as well as on maritime security and freedom of navigation.
Greater industry cooperation holds out some promise, too, as Europe and Australia expand defense spending and seek new, reliable partners in supply chains and critical inputs. However, von Seherr-Thoss sought to manage expectations that Australia might gain early access to procurement and component opportunities under the EU’s Security Action for Europe (SAFE) lending program. That seems unlikely under the first SAFE funding round, and there will be no guarantees if a second round emerges.
Shifting Ground
There are important underlying drivers that could help overcome traditional impediments of geographic separation and regional policy orientation to improve prospects for greater Europe-Australia cooperation. Middle powers know they need to bandwagon more effectively to preserve priority elements of the international rules-based system from which they have benefited over the past 80 years. Both sides also see that they have intersecting interests in limiting the harm where the system has eroded most (in areas such as trade, Ukraine, the Middle East, and the South China Sea). And all US allies are looking for ways to respond to the Trump administration’s crash-and-burn efforts to rebalance alliance expectations.
Of the two sides, Australia is arguably the most deeply wedded to its US alliance. Australia fears strategic isolation and has always sought force-multiplying capabilities to deal with the challenge of securing a large landmass and maritime domain as well as it broader regional interests. As a US ally and Five-Eyes partner, Australia has traditionally been able to access significant US security and intelligence goods that enable it to punch above its weight.
These ties have tightened under the AUKUS nuclear submarine and defense technology partnership. It is therefore no surprise that the Australian government has taken a lower-key approach to the Trump administration’s ongoing castigations of allies than have many European partners. Earlier this year, Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Richard Marles reaffirmed the centrality of the United States in Australia’s strategic thinking, emphasizing that “there is no effective balance of power in the Indo-Pacific absent the continued presence of the United States.”
Nonetheless, Canberra recognizes that its security relationship with Washington will evolve even as it doubles down under AUKUS. Hopes that future US administrations will seek to rehabilitate alliance frameworks are qualified by the prospect that Washington will not want, or likely be able, to resume its ex-ante security role given global power shifts. Even if the United States delivers more substantively on its long-hoped-for pivot to the Indo-Pacific, it will still want allies there to be more self-reliant and will inevitably place a greater premium on its own needs for high-end capabilities.
Capitalizing on Diversity
Australian leaders are therefore simultaneously emphasizing that the country is not backing away from its longstanding US ties and seeking greater diversification. In announcing Australia’s latest defense strategy in April, Marles committedCanberra to pursue greater self-reliance and to “double down on middle power cooperation”. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese framed the balance more colorfully, stating that “the United States relationship will be our most important security relationship, but that doesn't mean that it's an exclusive relationship. This isn't a monogamous relationship.”
Australia’s new defense strategy underscores its preparedness to embrace like-minded partners more vigorously, and this could open doors for deeper cooperation with both Indo-Pacific and European countries. Like Brussels, Canberra will look to regional interests first. Thus, the earliest manifestation of this growing willingness to diversify has been Canberra’s selection of a Japanese design and shipbuilder for Australia’s new frigate project. However, for Europe, this shift could open a new, positive phase in a defense-industry relationship that has endured many ups and downs.
In recent years, Australia’s cancellation of its conventional submarine program with France in 2021 and early retirement of the troubled European MRH90 and Tiger helicopters represented low points. However, collaboration on guided missile destroyers with Spain’s Navantia, on military vehicles and munitions with Germany’s Rheinmetall, and on combat systems with Sweden’s Saab appear much more successful. New capability priorities in undersea warfare, long-range strike, guided weapons, uncrewed (drone) systems, missile defense, space, and command-and-control systems could offer additional partnership opportunities for European counterparts with similar shopping lists. Australia’s agreementwith NATO’s Support and Procurement Organization will also facilitate greater engagement with Europe on capability acquisition, system support, and logistics.
Notwithstanding a significant scale difference, Australia offers Europe some specialized capabilities and niche defense products. It deployed surveillance and command-and-control aircraft to Europe in 2022, 2023, and 2025, and has joinedthe Movement Coordination Center-Europe to pool airlift and sealift capabilities. Australia’s training and materiel support for Ukraine now totals over AUD1.6 billion. On the materiel side, some notable recent Australian sales include armored fighting vehicles to Germany worth over €600 million and laser weapons systems to the Netherlands worth €71 million.
Australia also maintains unique training and testing facilities that European partners and local corporate subsidiaries have utilized. Examples include now-regular European participation in the Talisman Sabre exercise and the use of Australian missile- and explosives-testing facilities, recently demonstrated by the test of a multiple launch rocket warhead, co-developed by Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Thales.
Making Policy Coordination More Substantive
While both Europe and Australia have longstanding, shared commitments to broad multilateral peace and security architecture, collaborating more intensively to win small gains in crisis management and peacebuilding that reinforce these principles could deliver mutual practical benefits. Shared interests in Ukraine’s survival and in preserving the operation of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea are examples of areas in which Europe and Australia can work more closely to maintain and restore international architecture in substantive ways. Building on existing work to tackle issues such as global terrorism and financing, violent extremism, transnational organized crime, cybercrime, and money-laundering provides further opportunities to add more substance to the Europe-Australia partnership. Much will depend, however, on how serious the EU and its members are about sustaining long-term commitments to their Indo-Pacific strategies, given ongoing and evolving security challenges closer to home.
Leveraging Bilateral Connections
The “Who do I call if I want to speak to Europe?” trope, incorrectly attributed to Henry Kissinger, applies less and less as the EU gains more traction in coordinating European security priorities. However, member states’ sovereignty over their security capabilities means the coherence of security connections between the EU and its members remains highly relevant for partners such as Australia that are seeking to deepen cooperation with “Europe”. Thus, as Australia deepens bilateral European ties through, among other efforts, a status-of-forces agreement under negotiation with Germany and enhanced reciprocal access arrangements with France (valuable for both parties given France’s Pacific and Indian ocean presence), the Brussels dimension needs to be factored in. Similarly, the impact of important bilateral measures to support international rules and norms, such as freedom-of-navigation activities in the South China Sea undertaken by Germany and France, will be amplified by strong EU political endorsement.
Overall, the balance of opportunity versus constraint in assessing the prospects for deeper security cooperation between Europe and Australia (and with other Indo-Pacific partners) does seem to have shifted toward the positive. However, the issue of bandwidth and resources within respective systems will remain a decisive factor in the realization of this potential.
The views expressed herein are those solely of the author(s). GMF as an institution does not take positions.