Defense|The European Commission estimates that there is a EUR 500 billion investment shortfall in EU defense, which should be covered over the next ten years.
Brussels
Visions Major defense projects financed jointly by the EU countries ran into a wall at the summit of the leaders of the member states on Thursday. At the meeting, Germany and the Netherlands rejected the idea of large projects financed from a common fund.
Joint debt, so-called defense bonds, were also defeated at the meeting. No one at the meeting mentioned joint debt out loud, but it was still present in the discussion.
Defense and strengthening the defense industry was one of the main topics discussed at the summit. The European Commission presented its assessment at the meeting, according to which an investment debt of 500 billion euros has arisen for the EU’s defense, which should be covered in ten years.
The core question is how to finance the necessary investments. This was discussed among the leaders on Thursday, which the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte your image is hard.
In particular, the Baltic countries, Poland, Italy and France have pushed for the defense to be financed from a common pocket and kept the door open to joint debt. Prime Minister of Poland Donald Tusk said that he was very angry when he listened to the arguments that other countries used to knock down common defense funding.
The group of countries led by Germany and the Netherlands is suspicious of EU-level funding. The group feels that some of the countries that have neglected their defense investments are trying to shift the necessary additional investments to be paid by others. On the other hand, Poland, which is pursuing joint investments, will spend four percent of its gross domestic product on defense this year, more than any other NATO country.
The Nuuka country group wants public investment primarily from national budgets. They also want to speed up the channeling of private capital into the defense industry. They also believe that structural reforms, such as improving the functioning of the internal market for the defense industry, are more effective than EU-level public investment.
Anything no very concrete guidelines for strengthening the defense industry came from the summit.
The EU leaders gave the commission the task of preparing different financing options. At Germany’s and Holland’s insistence, the records were carefully filed so that they cannot even accidentally be interpreted as meaning that the countries would commit to joint public investments.
The EU leaders also dropped mentions of the EU’s joint flagship projects in the field of defense from the strategic agenda for the next few years. The entry was changed so that member countries can promote their own flagship projects.
Likewise, the EU leaders wanted to emphasize in the strategic agenda that, although the EU is wanted to be a stronger actor in the field of security and defense, NATO is still the basis of the defense of most EU countries, and duplicate tasks should not be created for the EU.
A think tank Research Director of EPC Janis Emmanouilidis estimates that the policies agreed by the EU leaders on Thursday are ambitious on paper, but they lack concreteness and means.
“When you look at how the decisions are going to be implemented and financed, there are more questions than answers.”
CEO of EPC Fabian Zuleeg says that the EU is losing valuable time in defense development.
“It seems that some leaders think we have years and years, but even if decisions are made now, they will take years to implement.”
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