Executive Summary

The signing of the “Agreement on Enhanced Co-operation on Security, Defence, and Resilience” in Rome on 23 January 2026, represents a fundamental shift in European power dynamics. Beyond a standard defence treaty, this document formalises a partnership focused on three high-stakes geopolitical arenas: the African continent, orbital strategic autonomy, and transnational cyber resilience.

By establishing a 2+2 ministerial structure and launching the BROMO space initiative, Germany and Italy have created a pragmatic axis that bypasses traditional bureaucratic inertia to secure European interests against systemic rivals in Washington and Beijing.

Mediterranean Security

The agreement explicitly links German industrial capacity with Italy’s Mattei Plan – a strategic framework designed to reposition Italy as a central hub for energy and security in Africa. This cooperation is a direct response to the “Wider Mediterranean” (Mediterraneo Allargato) doctrine – an evolutionary shift in Italian strategic thought that began in the first half of the 20th century and later formalised in the 1980s – which views North Africa and the Sahel as integral to European domestic security.

The “Wider Mediterranean” doctrine reconceptualises the Mediterranean not as a closed sea, but as a vast continuum stretching from the Gulf of Guinea to the Arabian Sea. The doctrine posits that European domestic security is inseparable from the stability of the Sahel, the Horn of Africa, and the Middle East, treating these regions as part of a single, interlinked security complex.

By formalising this approach, Berlin and Rome are acknowledging that the stability of the Euro-Mediterranean region depends on a permanent security presence and a unified intelligence network capable of monitoring threats long before they reach the European coastline. This strategic depth is designed to transform the Mediterranean from a frontier of crisis into a managed security corridor, effectively shifting Europe’s defensive perimeter several hundred miles south into the African interior.

The agreement represents a pivot toward a more muscular, investment-led approach to migration management and counterterrorism. By co-funding projects in North Africa, Berlin and Rome are attempting to displace the influence of the Wagner Group, who maintains an active presence in six African countries (Central African Republic, Mali, Libya, Sudan, Niger, and Burkina Faso), and Chinese infrastructure loans. The effort extends beyond conventional development assistance, signalling a security-first strategy designed to stabilise key transit countries and ease migratory pressure along the European Union’s southern borders.

Orbital Autonomy

A central pillar of the treaty is the BROMO initiative, an €11.6 billion project that consolidates the satellite divisions of Airbus and Leonardo as a deliberate geopolitical response to Europe’s reliance on American commercial providers and the rapid expansion of Chinese megaconstellations. These include Beijing’s state-led Guowang (GW) “National Network,” which plans around 13,000 satellites to secure global internet sovereignty, Shanghai-backed Qianfan (G60/“Thousand Sails”), a commercial constellation of more than 12,000 satellites designed to contest orbital slots dominated by Starlink, and Honghu-3, a private-sector effort focused on deep-space and high-capacity data transmission.

By consolidating capabilities into a single European space industrial anchor, Germany and Italy are signalling that existing satellite assets, while substantial, are no longer sufficient for the level of autonomy now required. Europe already operates significant systems such as the Galileo navigation constellation and the Copernicus Earth-observation programme, but these were not designed to provide resilient, end-to-end sovereign connectivity for military command and secure communications. Project BROMO is therefore intended to reinforce autonomy by reducing dependence on externally controlled data and services, ensuring that European intelligence, command, and communications are insulated from policy shifts by American commercial providers and from the expanding reach of Chinese state-backed constellations.

The Cyber and Undersea Frontiers

The agreement also formalises a more systematic response to grey-zone activity targeting European critical infrastructure, moving cooperation beyond episodic information sharing toward standing operational coordination. The exchange of liaison officers between German and Italian Cyber Commands is intended to improve routine situational awareness, accelerate cross-domain analysis, and support joint attribution of incidents that fall below the threshold of armed conflict.

The emphasis on Critical Undersea Infrastructure reflects recent precedent rather than abstract risk. The destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines in 2022 and the damage to the Balticconnector gas pipeline and telecommunications cables between Finland and Estonia in 2023 highlighted how exposed Europe’s subsea energy and data networks remain to deniable interference. German-Italian coordination on shared situational-awareness platforms is therefore aimed at complementing existing NATO efforts to monitor the Baltic and Mediterranean theatres.

Reshaping EU and NATO Security

More broadly, the agreement marks another step in the gradual restructuring of the European pillar within NATO. European defence has long been characterised by national silos and parallel procurement, and the treaty represents a deliberate effort to impose greater standardisation and interoperability, particularly across flagship programmes such as the Panzerhaubitze 2000 artillery system and the Class 212 submarine family, where shared platforms have historically been undermined by divergent national specifications and upgrade paths.

By harmonising military requirements, Berlin and Rome are attempting to decrease the 78% of European defence acquisitions that currently flow to non-EU nations. Politically, this creates a centre-right industrial bloc that will likely dominate EU budget negotiations, prioritising defence readiness and industrial competitiveness over regulatory expansion.

Concluding Assessment

The 2026 Rome Agreement establishes a new centre of gravity in European affairs. It is a blueprint for a more resilient, militarily capable Europe that is prepared to act independently on the global stage. The success of this axis will be measured by the operational deployment of the BROMO satellite entity and the tangible stabilisation of key African partners. If successful, this partnership will likely serve as the primary architect for European security and industrial policy throughout the late 2020s.

Image source: Official X account of Friedrich Merz, Chancellor of Germany