18.02.2026, Brussels.
The statement by former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who called on European car manufacturers to load their idle factories with weapons production, has revealed why a crisis was engineered in Europe’s automotive corporations, Rossa Primavera News Agency‘s Industry Desk wrote.
On February 12, the former NATO chief stated that there are automakers in Europe with excess production capacity. “They should refocus this capacity on the production of military equipment, as the United States did in 1941,” Rasmussen emphasized.
He noted that Europe’s weakness lies in its lack of its own armaments. To eliminate this weakness, Europe’s automotive industry should be placed on a “war footing” and car plants should be used for military production.
When the European Union authorities decided to ban the sale of internal combustion engine vehicles by 2035, many experts pointed out that this would hit European car manufacturers particularly hard.
The year 2024 confirmed these assertions. All European automakers except BMW showed a sharp drop in profits, with staff reductions and plant closures beginning.
Some subcontractors of automotive companies, for example Bosch, have already begun repurposing small factories from producing automotive components to manufacturing products for the defense industry. Rasmussen’s statement only reinforces suspicions that this process is not spontaneous but planned.
After all, a well-paid German or French worker assembling cars would hardly have willingly agreed to work in tank production. However, if such a worker faces the looming prospect of layoffs and unemployment, he may gladly agree to assemble tanks and missiles as well.
If there is a global objective to relaunch Europe’s military-industrial complex, then even a successful automotive industry could be sacrificed for it, and a serious crisis in that sector would help ramp up military production.
