The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has urged European governments again to “do their homework” and “assume their responsibility” to massively elevate the expense in defense after the “strong call of attention” for the new geopolitical context and the approach between Moscow and Washington, although he has defended that the United States is an “ally” of the European Union and the NATO. Relationships have been tensioned since Donald Trump’s arrival at the White House.
“We have to do our homework, we have to fulfill our responsibilities and load them on our shoulders,” said Von der Leyen in a press conference this Sunday in Brussels to review the first hundred days of his second community executive and defend the urgency of passing his plan to “rearm Europe.
In this way, German politics has argued that “being allies does not mean that there is an imbalance in responsibility or load” that is shared and that, the United States is “ally, does not mean that the pattern we had in the last 25 or 30 years, if not more, remain correct.”
In the eyes of what was a German Defense Minister, the United States “is an ally of the transatlantic alliance” although “there are undoubtedly discussion points”, so the current situation must be seen as a “very strong call of attention” and understand that “it is now the time that Europe takes a step forward.”
To several questions of the press about the tension with the Trump administration, von der Leyen has avoided the confrontation, rejected flat that can be equated with the relationship with China and has trusted that it can be seen in person with the US president “when the time comes”, despite the distance that Washington is putting with respect to the European Union and that they have barely shared a protocol phone call after the American elections.
Thus, the president of the European Commission wanted to focus on the efforts of the community block to “build a stronger, more safe and more prosperous” and do it in a “fast, proportionate and determination.”
First “College of Commissioners on Defense”
He has also announced that in the next dates the first “College of Commissioners on Defense” will convene, a format that seeks that all commissioners are adequately informed about security and defense issues given their “transactionality.” Even so, the German conservative has barely given details about the objective of this format or clarified when it will be the first date or the periodicity it will have.
Before a new era of “geostrategic competence,” said Von der Leyen, in which others “close, sow uncertainty and strive to obtain short -term profits,” the European Union “will remain open” and offer “stability and predictability.”
In any case, the head of the Community Executive has made it clear that she will dedicate the next two weeks to establish the “legal development” of the measures he has included in her “rearm Europe” plan and that they will integrate the next White Paper on Defense that will serve as a basis for the next discussion of leaders in the European Council of March 20 and 21.
The plan to rearm Europe starts from a first investment of 150,000 million euros in loans and other measures such as the flexibility of fiscal rules so that national expenditure in defense does not compute in the deficit or margin objectives to reschedule cohesion funds. It is a package with which the EU would aspire to mobilize up to 800,000 million euros but that does not attend for now the call of countries such as Spain to also allocate European subsidies to this strategy.
Eurobones
Asked in case it does not believe it is necessary to resort to Eurobos to finance European subsidies, von der Leyen has been blunt to make it clear that for the moment it is centered “on the legal proposal (of what is already proposed), which is sufficiently complex.”
This does not assume, he clarified, that “nothing is out of the table” because she is “open to everything that is necessary”, but has considered premature “to start a three -day debate of having received the unanimous support” to her plan to rearms, with “many positive responses from everywhere.”
“I think it is soon to return with new ideas,” he has settled, without closing the door to “explore” everything that the member states already raise in the next European Council all the ideas that leaders put on the table.
#Von #der #Leyen #installs #duties #raise #expense #defense #defending #ally
