Next week, Members of the European Parliament will face a defining choice: whether to approve the EU’s 2026 budget – and set the tone for the upcoming negotiations around the next Multiannual Financial Framework (2028–2034) and the defence-heavy “omnibus packages”. At stake is whether Europe channels unprecedented amounts of public money into militarisation and the arms industry, or chooses a path rooted in peace, democracy, and human security.
Stop ReArm Europe – a coalition of more than 800 organisations across the continent – is calling on MEPs to reject this escalating agenda of rearmament. Europe stands at a crossroads: invest in life, or subsidise the machinery of death.
The message could not be clearer: real security means human security. Clean air, a stable climate, economic dignity, strong public health systems, resilient communities, and democratic rights are what keep societies safe. Yet Europe is being pulled into a new era of militarised politics, driven not by public need but by the political influence of arms companies whose power inside EU institutions has exploded.
In 2025, the European Commission met with weapons lobbyists almost six times more often than with unions, NGOs or scientists on issues of war and geopolitics. The result has been predictable: a surge of policies that pour public money into weapons production, weaken social and environmental standards, and raid civilian budgets in order to fund a continental arms race that will make Europe – and the world – less secure.
These decisions mortgage Europe’s future. They deepen public debt while starving diplomacy, climate action, poverty reduction and conflict prevention of the resources needed to avert catastrophe. The proposed MFF multiplies military and space spending fivefold, cannibalising civil programmes and concealing the transfers behind layers of institutional complexity. This is not a peace strategy; it is a blueprint for perpetual insecurity, climate breakdown and geopolitical escalation.
DiEM25 stands firmly with the Stop ReArm Europe coalition. Our movement has consistently fought for peace, for demilitarisation, and for an end to the genocide in Gaza – and against a European establishment that preaches human rights while bankrolling militarised hypocrisy. Europe must choose diplomacy over destruction; life over weapons.
Alongside hundreds of organisations across the continent, we say: Move the money from war to peace. Now. The next generation is watching – and they deserve a future built on justice, solidarity and shared security, not on the profits of the arms industry.
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