Where is European defence headed? Funding, capabilities and defence-industrial capacity

Juha Jokela is the Programme Director of the European Union and strategic competition research programme at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.

Jokela’s previous academic and policy studies projects and publications include the EU’s sanctions policy, political implications of Brexit for the EU, political and security developments in the Arctic, Europeanisation of foreign policy, EU’s Asia relations, and Finland’s EU policy. His current research interests include differentiated integration in EU’s foreign policy, and the role of G7 and G20 in multilateral cooperation.

Jokela has previously worked at the EU Institute for Security Studies as a Senior Associated Analyst and Senior Visiting Research Fellow, as an Advisor at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, and as a Research Fellow and the Director of the Network for European Studies at the University of Helsinki. Jokela is a member of the board of Trans European Policy Studies Association (TEPSA), member of the Steering Committee of EuroMesCo, the main network of research centres and think-tanks in the Euro-Mediterranean area, and member of the Academic Advisory Board of the Institut für Europäische Politik (IEP).

Jokela holds a PhD from the University of Bristol (UK), which focused on Europeanisation and foreign policy in Finland and the UK, and a Bachelor of Social Sciences from the University of Birmingham (UK).

Otto Saxén, M.Soc.Sc., is Director General of the Defence Policy Department at the Ministry of Defence. He started in his position on 1 April 2026.

Otto Saxén has previously served as Deputy Director General of the Department for Defence Policy. He has also held other positions at the Ministry of Defence, including Director of the Defence Cooperation Unit, Ministerial Adviser and Senior Researcher at the Defence Cooperation Unit and Senior Researcher at the National Defence Unit. From 2009 to 2013, Saxén worked as Senior Specialist in defence policy at Finland’s Mission to NATO in Brussels.

Guntram Wolff is a Senior Fellow at Bruegel. He specialises in a range of issues, including defence economics, particularly European rearmament, European governance, and the geoeconomics of trade, finance, climate policy and euro-area fiscal policy.

He is a Professor of Economics at the Université libre de Bruxelles and also a fellow at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. Previously, he was the director of Bruegel (2013-22) and the German Council on Foreign Relations (2022-24). He worked on the macroeconomics and governance of the euro area at the European Commission and the research department at the Bundesbank. He also worked as an external adviser to the International Monetary Fund. From 2012-16, he was a member of the French prime minister’s Conseil d’Analyse Economique. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Bonn.

Vesa Vihriälä is Senior Fellow at the University of Helsinki. He received his D Soc Sci (Econ) degree from the University of Helsinki and has also studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Vihriälä has a long career in economic policy analysis in various policy-making bodies and research establishments. He has worked at the Bank of Finland, Finnish Prime Minister’s Office, EU Commission, OECD Secretariat, and as the Managing Director at two Finnish private economic research institutes. Prior to his current position, he was Professor of Practice at the University of Helsinki for four years. Vihriälä specialises in macroeconomic policy, economic crises, and EU policies. He is a contributor to numerous publications on economic policy and provides regularly, e.g. at the hearings of parliamentary committees, expert opinions on policy.

Puonti holds a PhD in economics and has previously served as Head of Forecasting at ETLA Economic Research, as well as worked at the Finnish Ministry of Finance and in the banking sector.

With a strong background in macroeconomics and public finances, her expertise focuses on economic policy, and the operating environment of small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as European Union policies shaping competitiveness and the single market.

Tuomas Iso-Markku is a Senior Research Fellow in the European Union and Strategic Competition research programme at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA). His research deals with the EU’s role in security and defence matters, European defence cooperation, EU-NATO relations, German domestic politics, German foreign and EU policy, Finnish EU policy, Finnish foreign, security and defence policy as well as European party politics.

Iso-Markku’s publications encompass both policy-oriented and academic contributions, including several research reports prepared for the Finnish government as well as articles in top-ranked international academic journals such as German Politics and International Affairs. In addition to FIIA, his research has been published by several other European research institutes and think tanks.

Prior to joining FIIA in 2013, Iso-Markku studied and worked in Germany, completing a master’s degree at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder), Germany, and the Adam Mickiewicz University Poznań, Poland. Iso-Markku is part of the pan-European Associate Researcher network of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).