# Bilateral Defence Pacts
> Formal government-to-government security treaties that complement or bypass NATO, now numbering 160-plus among European states after Russia's 2022 invasion accelerated their pace.

**Meta:** type: reference · date: 2026-07-03 · heads:  · 3 takes · 3 lenses · 1 regions

## What it is

A bilateral defence pact is a formal, state-to-state treaty binding two governments on security cooperation: joint exercises, intelligence sharing, defence procurement, force integration, or mutual-assistance clauses. They operate alongside but separate from NATO's Article 5 collective-defence guarantee and the EU's mutual-defence clause under Article 42.7 of the Treaty on European Union. Depth varies from comprehensive frameworks covering all defence domains to narrow agreements on a single capability or technology.

The 1963 Élysée Treaty between France and Germany is the archetype: a post-war reconciliation pact that codified joint defence consultations between former adversaries. The Quirinal Treaty signed by France and Italy in November 2021 is a recent successor model: it established a framework for annual heads-of-government summits, the first of which convened at Antibes in June 2026 (see [마크롱, 첫 프랑스·이탈리아 양자 정상회담을 위해 앙티브에서 멜로니 맞이해](/ko/n/macron-meloni-antibes-summit)) and produced a bilateral defence roadmap on air defence, nuclear energy, and space. Players in the current European surge are primarily EU member states and the UK, with Ukraine as the principal recipient: as of mid-2026, 21 of the 27 EU member states have a bilateral defence agreement with Kyiv.

## History

Bilateral defence treaties coexisted with NATO from the alliance's 1949 founding, providing tailor-made layers above the baseline collective-defence commitment. The 1998 Saint-Malo Declaration, a joint France-UK statement, proposed an autonomous EU defence capacity and launched a generation of bilateral activity outside the purely transatlantic framework.

A new wave began after Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea. The UK, anticipating and then completing Brexit, signed 25 bilateral arrangements with 21 EU member states to preserve security links that EU membership had previously covered. By 2021 the Quirinal Treaty formalised France-Italy as a bilateral axis.

The decisive acceleration came with Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The Heinrich Böll Stiftung mapped over 160 bilateral and plurilateral defence agreements among EU member states, the UK, and Ukraine through 2025, with 80% concluded after February 2022. In 2024 and 2025 alone, 93 new agreements were signed, more than half the cumulative total.

## Current state

As of July 2026, Europe's bilateral defence architecture is dense and growing. France, Germany, Sweden, and Finland are hub states, each linked to more than 20 partner countries. Germany and Poland signed an inter-ministerial defence pact in Warsaw on 17 June 2026, covering Baltic Sea protection, military mobility, cyber defence, and deployment of German troops to help expand Poland's Eastern Shield fortifications on the Belarus and Russia borders (see [폴란드-독일, 동부 방어선 확장을 위한 방위협정 체결](/ko/n/poland-germany-defence-pact-2026)). France and Italy used their first Quirinal Treaty summit to sign a defence roadmap covering the SAMP/T air-defence system, nuclear-energy cooperation, and the "Bromo" European satellite project (see [마크롱과 멜로니, 트럼프와의 균열 후 앙티브에서 방위 로드맵 서명](/ko/n/macron-meloni-antibes-defence-roadmap-2026-06-25)). The two governments also announced a multinational coalition to succeed UNIFIL in southern Lebanon after its UN mandate expires 31 December 2026 (see [프랑스와 이탈리아, 유니필 대체 다국적 연합 제안, 레바논 환영](/ko/n/france-italy-post-unifil-coalition)).

At the EU level, the bloc's formal Security and Defence Partnerships, governed by the 2022 Strategic Compass, differ from these inter-state bilaterals. By March 2026 the EU had concluded nine SDPs: Moldova, Norway, Japan, South Korea, North Macedonia, Albania, the UK, Canada, and India.

## Relationships

The proliferation of bilateral pacts is reshaping European defence in ways NATO has not yet fully absorbed. Benefits are concrete: deeper trust, faster procurement, and interoperability gains that alliance-wide structures move too slowly to produce. France and Germany are using bilaterals to anchor Italy under the Quirinal Treaty and Poland under the Tusk-Merz pact into European strategic alignment, as US commitment to the continent becomes less certain under the Trump administration. The European Parliament Research Service, in its March 2026 briefing, warned that without coordination, these 160-plus agreements risk duplication, uneven depth, and a patchwork in which some agreements are politically symbolic rather than operationally meaningful.

## What to watch

- Whether NATO formally maps and integrates European bilateral commitments into collective planning, avoiding duplication.
- Whether the Franco-Italian UNIFIL successor coalition wins broader European backing and whether Hezbollah acquiesces to its presence in southern Lebanon.
- The operational specifics of German troop deployments under the Poland-Germany pact.
- How the European Parliament pushes to deepen EU-level SDPs with Ukraine, Moldova, and the Western Balkans.

## Regional takes (batched by bias / lens)

### official record
- **EU Council: Security and Defence Partnerships** (European Union, en) — EU Council overview of the bloc's formal Security and Defence Partnerships, setting out the legal and political framework for tailor-made SDPs with third-country partners under the 2022 Strategic Compass.
  Source: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/security-defence-partnerships/

### institutional briefing
- **European Parliament Research Service: The EU's New Bilateral Security and Defence Partnerships (EPRS_BRI 2025/767215)** (European Union, en) — Updated March 2026 briefing cataloguing the EU's nine signed Security and Defence Partnerships with Moldova, Norway, Japan, South Korea, North Macedonia, Albania, the UK, Canada, and India, with scope and common cooperation areas.
  Source: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document/EPRS_BRI(2025)767215

### European think-tank analysis
- **Heinrich Böll Stiftung: Phalanx of Defence Pacts? Mapping Bilateral Defence Partnerships in Europe** (European Union, en) — Maps over 160 bilateral and plurilateral defence agreements among EU members, the UK, and Ukraine; 80% signed since Russia's February 2022 invasion; France and Germany are hub states each linked to more than 20 partners.
  Source: https://eu.boell.org/en/defence-partnerships-europe

## Across the graph
- Related: [[france-italy-post-unifil-coalition]], [[macron-meloni-antibes-defence-roadmap-2026-06-25]], [[poland-germany-defence-pact-2026]], [[macron-meloni-antibes-summit]]
- Entities: Bilateral Defence Pacts, NATO, France, Germany, Poland, Italy

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