A comparative evaluation of defense expenditures in European Union countries

Despite the decrease in the ratio of countries' allocations from their defense budgets since the Cold War period, it is seen that the expenditures in the field of defense continue to increase in monetary terms in almost all countries. However, with the constantly growing, complex and increasingly uncertain conflicts in the international arena, Europe has difficulties in forming its defense policies and in catching a common idea in unity. In this study, which was prepared in the light of defense expenditures between 2011-2020, the basic concepts of defense expenditures were included and the course of defense expenditures around the world was tried to be conveyed using graphs. Defense expenditures of the European Union and its activities and projects in the field of defense have been tried to shed light on, the Permanent Structural Cooperation (PESCO) formation has been examined and the Common Security and Defense Policy has been tried to be projected. The nature of the EU's defense expenditures is also discussed in this study. Similarly, military operations carried out by the EU are among the subjects of this research. Literature summary created by scanning the literature in the field of interest of the study and the theoretical framework of the study are presented. Findings that emerged as a result of the analyzes made by referring to the data and method are presented. Accordingly, it has been revealed that there are significant differences between EU countries in terms of defense expenditures, that defense expenditures shifted from the West to the East in the EU after the 2014 Ukraine Crisis, and that defense expenditures are related to many factors such as human development index level, fragile country index score, and growth rate.