Von der Leyen proposes a defense plan to mobilize up to 800,000 million euros

The European Commission proposes to European governments a package of measures to facilitate an accelerated rearm of all countries that combines the flexible use of national budgets with mutual loans, while opening the possibility of deviating cohesion funds from the community budget for military expenses.

The President Ursula von der Leyen He explained in a statement the content of his letter to the European Council in which he proposes as a first measure “to unleash the use of public financing in defense nationwide” for what “we will soon propose to activate the national exhaust clause of the stability and growth pact which will allow them to significantly increase their defense expenses without activating the excessive deficit procedure.”

It has also proposed a new financial instrument similar to the recovery fund and could provide up to 150,000 million euros in loans for investment in defense, but in this case for joint investments, as explained by Von der Leyen, “it is basically about spending better and spending together” in air defense and antimiles, artillery systems, missiles and ammunition, drones and anti -products between other things. ” The idea is that this money “helps member states to group the demand and to buy together” and reduce costs, including purchases of the material that is sent directly to Ukraine. Another objective is to “strengthen our industrial defense base”, which implies that it is also intended to concentrate on European factories.

Finally, the Commission proposes to use the European budget itself for what “we will propose additional possibilities and incentives for the Member States that decide, if you want to use cohesion policy programs to increase defense spending.”

The president has encrypted the cost of Europe rearma plan in near 800,000 million euros For the next decade. To put in perspective, the Member States of the European Union spent 326,000 million euros in defense in 2024, according to official figures published by the European Council. While the EU was expected to increase the expense by more than 100,000 million by 2027, the announcement of Von der Leyen increases the expectations for the coming years.

A means of this debate, the countries will discuss at the European Council meeting on Thursday whether or not to confiscate the 300,000 euros of Russian public assets that are frozen because of the sanctions against the Kremlin. From that money the interests they produce are used, about 50,000 million a year, but the possibility of confiscating them is discussed, which would represent ignoring international legality.

The amounts that are handled at this time are not preceded. The Commission estimates that if all member countries increase on average by 1.5% of GDP their military expenses, “it could create a fiscal margin of about 650,000 million euros in a period of four years.”