Posted in PR and Communications,
European defence budgets are at record levels. Procurement programmes worth hundreds of billions of euros are live. Yet the public affairs and government relations infrastructure to navigate them, inside companies, across Berlin and Brussels, is nowhere near keeping pace. That is a strategic error. And it is creating an urgent, largely unmet demand for specialist talent.
The numbers are striking. European defence expenditure reached 343 billion euros in 2024, up 19% on the prior year and the tenth consecutive annual increase. In 2025 the figure is projected to reach 381 billion euros. At the NATO Hague Summit in June 2025, allies agreed a new commitment of 5% of GDP by 2035, a target that, if met, will represent the most significant structural shift in European security spending since the Cold War. Germany alone has committed 162 billion euros by 2029, double its 2021 level.
This is not a spending uplift. It is the transformation of an entire industrial sector.
Yet for many of the companies now competing for a share of those budgets, one critical piece of infrastructure is missing. They have the engineering. They have the products. Some have the contracts. What they do not have is the government relations capability to win in a market where procurement is, at its core, a political decision.
Record defence budgets don't allocate themselves. The decisive advantage in this sector is no longer just the quality of your engineering. It's knowing which door to knock on, and when. Yet in too many companies public affairs is still a nice-to-have, bolted on beside the R&D budget as an afterthought. That's a strategic error, because procurement is a political decision, not an engineering one. If you want your share of the pie, you have to invest in the people who can actually win it.
Robert Friebe, Senior Public Policy Professional Driving Government Engagement & Shaping Strategic Engagement Across Germany & EU
Much of the growth in European defence is coming from companies that have not historically been major participants in the Brussels and Berlin policy landscape. Industrial manufacturers, technology businesses and dual-use innovators are suddenly navigating EU funding instruments, procurement frameworks and government-to-government relationship dynamics that are entirely new to them
Two programmes in particular are driving the urgency. SAFE, the Security Action for Europe instrument and a 150 billion euro EU procurement mechanism adopted by the Council in May 2025, requires defence businesses to simultaneously navigate EU funding rules, interoperability standards and procurement law. The European Defence Industry Programme (EDIP), running from 2025 to 2027, adds a further 1.5 billion euro grant layer. Competing for that funding requires policy intelligence and stakeholder access that most companies simply do not have in-house.
Germany is the central market. An 18% increase in defence spending in real terms in 2025, on a trajectory to 3.2% of GDP by 2029, has made Berlin the most active single national public affairs environment in the sector. The infrastructure is growing to match, but there is a significant supply gap between the demand for experienced government relations professionals and the number available.
Further east, the picture is even starker. Poland is currently spending 4.48% of GDP on defence, Lithuania 4%, Latvia 3.73%, among the highest relative commitments in the alliance. Yet Eastern European markets have almost no resident public affairs ecosystem. Businesses operating there depend on DACH or Brussels-based support, adding further pressure to an already stretched talent pool.
Cutting-edge innovations such as AI and autonomy in weapon systems are vastly accelerating the speed of technological developments in defence and security. For politics it's a challenge to keep up. The maze of red tape that is German bureaucracy slows things down further. That is why it is crucial to have talent that understands both worlds, technology and policy.
German security policy expert
The fastest growing part of the sector, dual-use technology encompassing AI, drones, autonomous systems and cyber, sits precisely at this intersection. Public affairs professionals working in this space need to understand both the EU AI Act's application to high-risk systems and the specific requirements of defence procurement law. That is a rare combination. The professionals who hold both skill sets are among the most sought-after in Brussels and Berlin right now.
Defence communications is also not traditional corporate comms. It requires security clearance awareness, an understanding of government-to-government relationship navigation, and the ability to engage credibly with parliamentary committees, ministry officials and procurement bodies simultaneously. These are niche skills that cannot be developed quickly and cannot be improvised.
Defence has become one of the most competitive talent markets in public affairs. With rising budgets across Europe and the UK, and policy moving faster than at any point in a generation, consultancies and in-house teams alike are competing for a small pool of professionals who genuinely understand both the political and industrial sides of defence. The candidates in highest demand combine policy credibility in Brussels, Westminster or NATO circles with the commercial instincts to advise clients navigating procurement, regulation and public scrutiny.
Peter Ferguson, Managing Consultant, Hanson Search
For many companies, particularly those entering the European defence policy landscape for the first time, the answer is not a permanent hire. The investment is significant, the lead time is long, and the need may be acute but defined: a specific funding round, a procurement window, a regulatory consultation. Robert Friebe's point is well made. If companies are nervous about making the investment, they should know they do not necessarily need someone full-time.
Defence and security have become one of the standout growth areas for us. With the current geopolitical landscape driving significant funding into the sector, we're seeing strong demand from clients looking to hire public affairs and policy advisors who can work closely with EU institutions on shaping emerging regulation. The talent is out there — it's just limited. What we're finding is that many senior advisors who've built their careers in full-time roles are now choosing to step into fractional or interim work as this next chapter of the sector opens up, so it's very much a gap that experienced talent is stepping in to fill, rather than one where the skills simply don't exist.
Mirjana Dejanovska, European Talent Strategist, The Work Crowd
A fractional public affairs or corporate affairs specialist offers a fundamentally different proposition. They bring senior-level expertise, existing relationships and immediate market knowledge, working as an extension of the business rather than as a permanent overhead. For a company navigating SAFE or EDIP for the first time, a fractional adviser who already knows the landscape is vastly more cost-effective than a generalist hire who needs six months to build it.
This model is also timely in a broader sense. As communications professionals are increasingly called on to provide genuine strategic counsel, not just media relations or content production, the fractional corporate affairs specialist is becoming a recognised and valued category. An experienced professional working across two or three clients can bring a depth and breadth of perspective that a single in-house hire often cannot match.
The supply challenge remains real. Interim and fractional public affairs advisers with specific defence sector experience are exceptionally scarce. The organisations that move early, that build relationships with the right advisers before the urgent need arises, will have a material advantage over those that try to recruit into a crisis.
For businesses operating in or entering the European defence sector, the talent implications are clear. Government relations and public affairs can no longer be treated as a supporting function. They are a core competency in a market where the competition is political as much as it is commercial.
The questions worth asking now are straightforward. Do you have the right public affairs capability for the markets you are operating in and for the funding instruments you are competing for? If you are in Berlin, do you have someone who knows the Bundestag and the ministry relationships that matter? If you are competing for SAFE or EDIP funding, do you have the Brussels intelligence to know where the decision is being made?
If the honest answer is no, the permanent search market will not move quickly enough. The professionals with the right experience are already in demand, search timelines in this specialism are long, and the window on several of the key programmes is short. Interim and fractional is how organisations respond to that reality, and it is increasingly how the best ones are doing it.
Hanson Search is a specialist executive search firm placing senior public affairs, government relations and communications professionals across Europe, with particular depth in Brussels, Berlin and the UK. The Work Crowd is its global network of interim and fractional communications, marketing and public affairs talent. Together they offer permanent search and flexible resourcing across the full spectrum of public affairs hiring.