This article is part of the Back to school special.

The EU wants to dramatically boost defense spending — but the European Commission first needs to win a battle against European farmers.

There’s a lot to fight for.

In the current seven-year budget, which runs until 2027, farmers got €387 billion under the Common Agricultural Policy. That falls to €300 billion in the 2028-2034 plan, while defense and space skyrocket to €131 billion — five times more than in the existing budget. The overall budget proposal covers spending of €1.8 trillion.

Countries will also have more leeway to spend regional development funds on defense-related industrial and technological projects.

“Our farmers are not pleased, I’m afraid we will have to pick up a fight on that,” said an EU diplomat from Central Europe, granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.  

The defense push is a reaction to the growing threat posed by Russia — and to the worry that U.S. President Donald Trump will gut America’s traditional security relationship with Europe and begin pulling out American troops. Those concerns are especially vivid in countries close to Russia, where governments are jostling between demands to beef up their militaries and pressure from angry farmers worried about losing EU cash.

The European Commission is spinning its proposal as crucial for the continent’s defense needs, while adding that more money for armament will have positive economic spin-offs.

“We know that security is a top concern for citizens and governments, and it will strengthen our industrial base,” Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said when she announced the plan earlier this year.

But farmers, still the bloc’s most powerful lobbying group, have watched their share of the EU’s budget steadily wither in recent decades, from about 70 percent in 1980 to a quarter in 2023. They’re unwilling to give more away.

The new agricultural policy proposal “does not satisfy us — given how we got there” said Massimiliano Giansanti, the head of Copa, the farming side of the EU agri lobby Copa-Cogeca, in late August. He added that “there was a lack of a discussion … on what the objectives should have been.”

He also framed farmers’ demands as a security issue.

“If we continue like this and more and more farmers stop their activity, there will come a time when we Europeans will know what it means to buy products from outside Europe,” he said.

The pressure for keeping farming funding untouched comes as the EU’s geopolitics are changing rapidly.

Leaders, from former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, to France’s senior-most general and President Emmanuel Macron, are all calling for the bloc to become a serious military player if it is to survive cutthroat competition among rival powers.

Winners and losers

Predictions of how the battle between farmers and generals will play out vary wildly.

“I don’t think the figures will change significantly compared to the Commission’s proposal,” said an EU official, granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter. “That’s not because people think this is a great proposal, but because there’s no consensus over what to cut from the Commission’s proposal.”

But Marie Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, chair of the European Parliament’s defense and security committee, told POLITICO: “They will discuss it now for the next two years … and then nothing will be like it is today.”

She was backed by Guntram Wolff, a senior fellow at Bruegel, a Brussels-based think tank. “The agro-lobby is very powerful and will probably achieve a reduction in the €131 billion number,” he said.

However, there is also a sense that the EU’s budget needs recalibration.

“It is overdue that the amount of CAP falls significantly, and even what the Commission proposes is insufficient,” Wolff said. “We simply cannot afford to continue subsidizing large farmers at the current scale, but rather need to focus scarce public resources on European public goods,” he said, using a broad term that includes defense spending.

This means there will be months of fierce arguments before the new budget is finalized.

Pitting defense against space

It’s not just the overall allocation to farmers and defense that will be debated. Also up for grabs is the shape of the space budget, which is pooled together with defense.

“The exact distribution of the €131 billion has not yet been determined and would in any case depend on the annual budget negotiations,” said Niclas Herbst, chair of the European Parliament’s Budgetary Control Committee and member of its Defense and Security Committee.

“There is no need to play space and defense off against each other, because the two are closely related and equally important,” he stressed.

Csongor Körömi, Gregorio Sorgi and Bartosz Brzeziński contributed to this report.