Several European leaders, along with NATO chief Mark Rutte, are meeting in Brussels to discuss common defense priorities.
While many have reiterated the need to increase defense spending, the bloc hopes it won't have to be as high as US President Donald Trump's demands of 5% of their national GDP.
European countries believe they can cut costs dramatically by producing what they need for their collective defense.
"We need to consolidate our defense industry and develop common weapons systems. Our European defense industry could then utilize the same military systems and help Member States’ militaries become more interoperable," says EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas.
Many EU countries see defense from their national perspective and spend taxpayers' money on developing their own weapons systems.
In the face of a common threat from Russia, experts say that approach is costly and ineffective.
"One inefficiency is that in the EU we use a lot of different tank systems and therefore the unit cost of each purchase is higher than it would be if the number of systems was lower," says Rafael Loss, policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).
Instead of doubling up, experts say, Europeans should act in concert and bank on each other's capabilities.
And that's where the UK, the defense powerhouse, comes in.
Britain is no longer a member of the EU but is one of Western Europe's two nuclear-armed states. It's trained tens of thousands of Ukrainians for the battlefield and supplied the war-torn country with longer-range missiles that have proven critical in the fight against Russia.
However, British experts say the UK cannot help much without access to EU money.
"With the UK being outside of the EU at the moment, what that means is that when the EU comes up with ways to sort of finance increased defense spending or increase defense initiatives, the UK is left out in the cold," says Anand Sundar, Adviser to the director of the ECFR.
EU officials say coordinating Europe's defensive industries could be a win-win and would also create employment opportunities for both sides.