A new European tool to grant loans for armaments with a ‘fire power’ of 150 billion, the expenses for defense excluded from the counting of the deficit for the purposes of the stability pact and the possibility of diverting cohesion funds for armaments. These are the main interventions of the plan to re -enter the Europe presented by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. It is a five -point plan that aims to mobilize as many as 800 billion euros in 4 years.
“We are in an era of rearmament and Europe is ready to massively increase the expense for the defense. Both to respond to short -term urgency and to act and support Ukraine,” said Von der Leyen, who will send the details of his plan in a letter to the heads of the blocs, who will then discuss the special European Council convened by President Antonio Costa on Thursday. The plan, prepared in a hurry in Brussels, is the response to the hallway of the United States of Donald Trump for the safety of Ukraine and the whole of Europe.
Trump stops military aid to Ukraine after the dispute with Zelensky
For Kiev the weather holds
And while Washington has announced that he will freeze the aid already decided and financed for Kiev, Brussels promises new and huge. And as soon as possible because time tightens. “Ukraine has a security margin of about six months after Trump’s stop to Ukrainian military aid”, warned the Ukrainian deputy Fedor Venislavsky after the closed -door meeting of the national security committee, the defense and intelligence of Verkhovna Rada, the Ukrainian Parliament. And in addition to helping Kiev, in the new international context what Europeans have to do, continued Von der Leyen, is “to face the long -term need to take on greater responsibilities for our European security”.
The new tool for loans
And to do so the first proposed intervention is the creation of a new tool to grant loans to Member States guaranteed by the EU budget. This tool will have up to 150 billion euros “to support European efforts to achieve a rapid and significant increase in investments in European defense skills”, reads the letter sent to the heads of state and government.
Purchases will have to concern “necessary actions at European level in alignment with NATO”, specifies the text, which cites among the armaments to be purchased aerial defense systems, artillery, missiles and ammunition, drones but also tools for cybernetic war. “It is basically about spending better and spending together. We are talking about pan -European skills domains,” von der Leyen specified.
Defense outside the pact
The second point is the exclusion of the expenses for the defense from the counting of the deficit from the stability pact. It is not yet clear whether we talk about all the expenses or only those financed with the loans of the new tool. The letter reads that “the loans provided under the new EU tool will benefit from the safeguard clause of the pact”, the one that allows you to scroll them from the counting of the deficit. “If the Member States increased the expenditure for the defense on average by 1.5 percent of the GDP, a tax space of almost 650 billion euros could be created in a period of four years,” said Von der Leyen.
Cohesion funds for weapons are also
“In the short term the EU can do more to support the urgent need to increase investments for the defense with the community budget”, says the letter, which explains that the Commission intends to eliminate the restrictions existing to cohesion policy for support for large companies in the defense sector. Cohesion funds are usually invested to grow the poorest regions of the blockade, for this reason their use for armaments had been criticized by some. But in his letter to the twenty -seven the president of the Commission claims that “supporting the development of a strong and resilient European defense industry will also support the competitiveness of Europe and promote regional development”.
Private investments
Finally, the last two points of the plan aim to increase private investments. First of all, you want to modify the rules underlying the function of the Bei, the European investment bank, which at the moment cannot provide money for the purchase of weapons. Then, explains the letter to the leaders, “we must assure us that the billions of savings of the Europeans are invested within the block”, and this purpose “it is essential to complete the union of the capital markets”, a move that “could, alone, attract other hundreds of billions every year in the European economy”.
