By the end of the Cold War European defense markets fell into three tiers: France, Germany,and the UK, which were essentially self-sufficient and have technologically advanced firms in most sectors; a second tier (dominated by Italy and Spain and trailed by Belgium, the Netherlands, and Norway) that had considerable indigenous capability and some advanced firms but also depended heavily on collaboration; and Greece,Turkey, Portugal, and Denmark, which mostly relied on imports and licensed production. The development of national champions (monopoly suppliers in individual European countries) and proliferating transnational consolidation have been the two dominant trends in the European defense industry since the 1980s. The small national markets made it impossible to sustain competition in individual countries, but the emergence of national champions was only an interim solution. The problem of the fragmented European market was increasingly solved by transnational (primarily European) corporate consolidation.