Data | Europe picks up more arms even as global weapon imports drop Premium

Ukraine was the world’s third-largest importer of arms in 2022

European countries increased imports of major weaponry by 47% between 2013-17 and 2018-2022 even as the global volume of international arms transfers fell by 5.1%. If only those European states in the U.S.-led NATO alliance are considered, the increase in arms imports was 65% in the same period.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year has prompted European countries to rush to bolster their defences. “Even as arms transfers have declined globally, those to Europe have risen sharply due to the tensions between Russia and most other European states,” Pieter D. Wezeman, Senior Researcher with the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), said in a statement. SIPRI defines major arms as aircraft, warships, tanks, artillery, missiles and various heavy defence systems.

Chart 1 shows arms imports of select European nations using SIPRI’s Trend Indicator Values (TIVs) expressed in millions. It shows the import data for five time periods: 1998-2002, 2003-2007, 2008-2012, 2013-2017 and 2018-2022.

Chart 1

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The SIPRI TIV is a measure of the volume of international transfers of major arms. The TIV is based on the known unit production costs of a core set of weapons and is intended to represent the transfer of military resources rather than the financial value of the transfer. This data is intended to provide a common unit to allow the measurement of trends in the flow of arms to particular countries and regions over time.

As seen in Chart 1, in many European countries such as the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, France, Belgium, Serbia, Belarus and Lithuania, the arms imports in 2018-2022 are the highest across all periods considered. In other nations such as the U.K., Poland, Romania, Germany and Sweden, arms imports in the latest period are at least higher than in the previous five-year period (2013-2017).