The political scientist questioned the possibility of creating a pan-European nuclear arsenal

The creation or large-scale expansion of a nuclear arsenal by European countries would require enormous resources and is hardly possible in the current political and economic conditions. This was stated to Izvestia on January 22 by Evgeny Zlenko, project manager of the Polylog Group.

According to him, such a project would mean spending hundreds of billions of euros and a multi-year planning horizon, which makes reaching a consensus between the EU states extremely unlikely. The expert noted that even at the discussion level, the idea faces serious limitations, both financial and institutional.

"Europe's main difficulties in hypothetically building up its nuclear potential will also be its lost technological sovereignty and personnel shortage. From a technical point of view, the process is complicated. It is necessary to recreate from scratch or radically expand the entire infrastructure for the life cycle of nuclear weapons: from uranium mining and enrichment to the creation of secure control and communication systems. All this requires a scientific and industrial base," Zlenko explained.

According to the expert, financing such a project would be a separate challenge. It would be a question of redistributing hundreds of billions of euros from the EU's social and "green" programs in favor of defense tasks. At the same time, such investments would not give a quick return and would almost inevitably lead to a sharp aggravation of the geopolitical situation.

In addition, the issue of political control over nuclear weapons remains open. Zlenko pointed out that, in particular, France is unlikely to agree to transfer control of its arsenal to supranational structures in Brussels. In his opinion, such a step would be comparable to Paris's renunciation of the status of a permanent member of the UN Security Council, which makes such a scenario almost unrealistic.

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On the same day, NBC News reported that the EU was discussing expanding its nuclear arsenal and developing its own weapons of this type due to US policy. According to the TV channel, discussions have intensified in recent weeks amid US President Donald Trump's demands for the acquisition of Greenland and his critical speech in Davos.

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