From Welfare to Weapons: The Real Cost of Europe’s Militarisation is a REAL Project publication that examines Europe’s military turn through the lens of resources, raw materials, and economic power. The report shows how the EU’s rearmament agenda is not only about defence spending, but also about securing access to critical raw materials for military, industrial, and geopolitical purposes. It highlights how initiatives such as RESourceEU, the Critical Raw Materials Act, joint purchasing, stockpiling, and defence industrial expansion are reshaping EU policy around extraction, resource control, and strategic dependency.

The publication argues that militarisation risks deepening Europe’s material footprint, intensifying global competition over minerals such as lithium, cobalt, and rare earths, and reinforcing extractive pressures both inside and outside Europe. It links the defence agenda to wider questions of resource justice, democratic accountability, environmental harm, and the diversion of public investment away from welfare and towards war preparation. By doing so, the report places raw materials at the centre of the debate on security and warns against a future in which scarce resources are increasingly captured by military and corporate interests.

Finally, the report calls for an alternative European approach based on demand reduction, lower material use, public investment, diplomacy, and a broader understanding of security rooted in collective wellbeing rather than militarised competition.