Europe talks tough on military spending, but unity is fracturing | European leaders are struggling to find the money and the political will to replace the bulk of the U.S. contribution to Ukraine and to their own defense
Posted by ONETRILLIONAMERICANS
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> European leaders have gotten the message from Washington about doing more for their own defense and for Ukraine, too. They are talking tough when it comes to supporting Ukraine and about protecting their own borders, and they are standing up to a demanding and even hostile Trump administration.
> But there is an inevitable gap between talk and action, and unity is fracturing already, especially when it comes to spending and borrowing money in a period of low growth and high debt.
The Dutch and others are not fans of raising collective debt for defense. Keeping Hungary on board is ever more difficult.
> And when the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced a plan for billions more for the military, called “ReArm Europe,” two of the bloc’s largest countries, Italy and Spain, thought that was all a bit aggressive. So now the plan has been rebranded as “Readiness 2030.”
> Kaja Kallas, the former prime minister of Estonia who is now the chief foreign and security official for the European Union, has been a forceful advocate for supporting Ukraine as a first line of European defense against an aggressive, militarized Russia.
> **Ms. von der Leyen sold her rearmament or readiness plan with a headline figure of €800 billion. But only €150 billion of that is real money, available as long-term loans for countries that wish to use it for the military.** The rest simply represents a notional figure — a four-year permission from the bloc for countries to borrow even more for military purposes out of their own national budgets.
> For a country like Germany, which has low debt, that is likely to work, especially now that the next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, got Parliament to agree to loosen its own debt rules to allow for huge spending on the military, civilian infrastructure and climate.
> But for countries like Italy and Spain, which can feel far away from Russia and have their own fiscal problems, that may not be an easy choice. France, despite President Emmanuel Macron’s strong words about European “strategic autonomy” and his desire to lead the Continent, is itself deeply indebted, and piling on more debt is politically and economically hazardous.
!ping FOREIGN-POLICY&EUROPE&MILITARY
The €150 billion is stuck too.
>The EU’s €150 billion rearmament plan is in jeopardy, as deep divisions between member states over how to pay for it—through national loans or joint EU bonds—threaten to derail the proposal before it even launches.
>Just like in the case of Brussels’s ambitious €40 billion military aid plan for Ukraine, which was silently removed from the agenda after being rejected by half a dozen member states, it seems there’s no unity among EU countries regarding the defense plan either.
>This push is led by France, Italy, and Spain, the same countries that forced Brussels to cancel the €40 billion Ukraine package due to ‘budgetary reasons.’
>According to an unnamed diplomat, these countries “have serious doubts on the feasibility or even the possibility of indebting [themselves] to these levels.” To them, the idea of grants raised by common debt and jointly financed by all 27 countries sounds much better.
>However, EU bonds are a red line for the so-called ‘frugal’ member states—primarily Germany, the Netherlands, and the Nordics—who would have no problem financing their own national debt and therefore don’t want to be responsible for others’. Backing individual loans with the common EU budget is already seen as a shared liability, but nowhere as risky as collective debt.
I get that these are nice headlines, but can we please just let the democratic/political process do it’s job before writing doom articles like this? This really doesn’t even help Ukraine.
Not every disagreement means that there is no political will, or that “the plan has collapsed” or something.
Spain and Italy are being roadblocks, well fine, then we’ll just work around them, and we’ll figure out what to do with them later.
This was always going to take a few months. I don’t know why people are surprised by this. Anyone who knows how dysfunctional the EU can be knew that there were going to be some hurdles.
Anyone who thinks that Europe will rearm in the next 20(or even begin the process seriously in the next 4) years to the point they are able to defend themselves without US help is honestly naive, outside of a few eastern countries the euros simply don’t have the political will to make the investments necessary.