“The war of aggression launched by Russia marks a tectonic shift in the history of Europe”, says the Versailles declaration signed on Friday by the 27 heads of state or government of the European Union (EU).
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A change that will result in an unprecedented rearmament in more than three decades after the bloc’s informal summit that took a new step towards strengthening its military posture.
(He is interested in: NATO is debated by sending planes to Ukraine in the face of threats from Russia)
While the EU is not technically at war with Russia, the invasion of Ukraine threatens to overflow the borders of this countrysomething that the Balkan wars, concentrated in their region, never did.
The countries of the current EU spent on defense at the end of the Cold War an average equivalent to four percent of their GDP. Today, they spend 1.5 percent, despite the fact that NATO requires them to reach at least 2 percent, an issue that few do.
However, these policies to reduce military spending, established after decades of peace in the old continent, are about to be corrected. Russia’s attack on Ukraine reopened Europe’s arsenals.
Turning on the lights, after clearing the cobwebs, Europeans discovered that they have weaker Armed Forces than they did 30 years ago. During those three decades, military spending has been cut in the knowledge that ultimately, in the face of a serious threat, they were under the US nuclear umbrella.
Now, Putin’s war reminds them that they must be part of the Western military bloc by doing their part, not just formally, and that they cannot just sit back and wait for the “American friend” to act.
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Scholz’s Germany gave the first signal days after the Russian attack. The European country that most temporized with Russia and the one that did the most business with Moscow woke up from his dream.
Germany will increase military spending permanently to exceed 2 percent of annual GDP and it will also launch a special military fund of 100,000 million euros to buy more fighter-bombers, more tanks, more helicopters, better weapons and new ships.
That expense will make the German the first Army in Europe in a decade, ahead of the French and the British. What decades ago would have been seen by its neighbors as a sign of German militarism and warmongering – warnings from history – is now seen as a responsible decision.
To this was added the announcement of significant increases in military spending by Denmark and Sweden. Although the same reaction is expected from almost the entire European bloc.
The European Commission was commissioned to prepare, no later than May, a report on “identified strategic deficiencies” and on the policies that would be needed “to stimulate shared investments in projects and joint acquisition of defense capabilities.”
In that sense, The premise left by the Versailles summit is that we must buy and do more together so that the material is interoperable and more soldiers can be professionally trained.
energy independence
The Versailles declaration also says that European governments will “reduce dependence on Russian gas, oil and coal.” But that they will do so progressively according to a plan that the European Commission will present in May and that, if fulfilled, would end these imports in 2027.
With the current prices of hydrocarbons, it means that European governments will continue to pay between 500 and 1,000 million euros a month to Russia and between 30,000 and 60,000 million in five years.
And while some countries want to make this cut immediately, such as Poland or Slovakia, which depend practically one hundred percent on Russian gas to move their industry and heat their homes, Germany led a group, with Italy just behind, which refused this immediate cutoff due to economic impact.
Given this scenario, the question is: How will the increased military spending and investments needed to forcibly reduce Russia’s energy independence be paid for?
The French government, which holds the six-monthly presidency of the Council of the European Union, asked the European Commission to prepare a proposal to launch a fund similar to the one approved for the post-pandemic. This time with money dedicated to paying for investments in energy and military spending.
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The French proposal has the support of several governments, including the Spanish and Italian, but not unanimously because it would once again be financed with European debt issues.
Some governments understand that it is preferable to first spend the money from the current fund (750,000 million euros of which more than 650,000 million are still available) before starting to organize another.
However, France will continue promoting its idea and hopes that it will be studied more seriously at the next Summit, at the end of March. Even President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday that to sustain rising military and energy spending “common investments are needed to be financed at the European level and avoid fragmentation.”
The Heads of State and Government, meeting in the Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles, also entrusted the European Commission to stop once and for all the rocket that energy prices have become.
The European Executive must present at the end of this month “a plan to guarantee security of supply and affordable prices for energy during the coming winter season.”
And since the governments want solutions, they have already commissioned the European Commission itself to reform the electricity market so that electricity is not paid for at the price of that generated with natural gas.
Although the Commission this week endorsed putting maximum prices on electricity, the Summit pushed it to take measures in the short term (limit prices) and in the medium term. Among the latter, it should study how energy prices are formed to know if gas, at a time when it is practically a luxury item and a weapon of war, should enter the equation.
Ukraine to the EU?
The Ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelensky, sent his request to join the EU just two weeks ago.
Although Ukraine will not have an accelerated accession process to the European bloc, the ambassadors of the 27, who usually take months to simply take such a letter into consideration, have already done so before the European Commission, which must submit a report on the current situation of Ukraine in terms of respect for the rule of law and other basic standards for its accession.
The truth is that although Brussels will make its report in the coming months, the summit put on Friday a brake that would make Ukraine’s entry run in a minimum of five years, without the possibility of skipping deadlines and procedures.
EU diplomats assured that quickly granting Ukraine the status of a candidate country will not change the war at all and it will be a signal that Moscow will take as one more grievance to use against the same country.
Others see it differently. Lithuanian Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins said that analysis is wrong because “Putin has his plan of aggression to eliminate Ukraine.”
And as Russia’s neighborhood flees Moscow, membership is seen among European governments in two different ways. Those from the east see the granting of candidate country status as a political measure to anchor the country in the European bloc and to push it towards the modernization of political and administrative structures.
For their part, the oldest Member States, and mainly Western European countries, see accession as a last step after many years of negotiations and reforms.
What there will be is more money to pay for weapons and send them to Ukraine. The current fund of 500 million euros will be doubled to 1,000 million.
IDAFE MARTIN PEREZ
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Brussels @IdafeMartin
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