Crosetto in Brussels applauds Eurobonds for defence. On Ukraine: “We gave more than others”

Brussels – Italian Defence Minister Guido Crosetto fully supports the suggested hypothesis at the Warsaw summit by colleague Antonio Tajani and his counterparts from France, Germany, Poland, Spain, and the UK. Eurobonds for defence are “an idea to be welcomed because they would “guarantee in a European way the indebtedness of nations” to reach the NATO target of 2 per cent of GDP allocated to defence. A goal that Italy and six other countries in the EU bloc still miss.

On the EU Council on Foreign Affairs and Defense’s sidelines, Crosetto insisted that common borrowing would “take away the burden of having different debt interests” from each nation and “make security and defence a common asset.” Among the EU member states that are part of the Atlantic Alliance, Belgium, Croatia, Luxembourg, Portugal, Slovenia, and Spain have also not yet reached the 2 per cent of GDP bar in military spending.

In Italy, “several governments have committed to achieving” the NATO target, but “every time the budget law is made, there are difficulties,” the Melonian minister said. According to Crosetto, the problem could be circumvented by “eliminating European constraints regarding the incidence of defence spending on the stability pact” because “at a time of total insecurity, they should not be put in competition with those for education and health.”

While Italy has struggled to reach 1.49 per cent of GDP, there are already four member countries—Greece, Latvia, Estonia, and Poland—already above 3 per cent. Warsaw reached 4.12 per cent. “We committed to 2 per cent; I know it will not be enough, but it seems to me that’s enough for now,” Crosetto commented.

The defence ministers of the 27 discussed with the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, the need to follow the example of the United States and remove restrictions on Ukraine’s use of weapons on Russian territory. In the morning—on the occasion of the 1,000-day anniversary of the start of the Russian invasion—the same Volodymyr Zelensky insisted on this in front of the European Parliament, explaining that, in order to force Moscow into meaningful negotiations, one must “first destroy its ammunition depots, its military logistics, its air bases.”

The decision is up to the chancelleries, and Italy is among the member states that have ruled out allowing Kyiv to counterattack Russia with its weapons. Crosetto confirmed the position on the sidelines of the proceedings. “It does not seem to me that so far there have been Ukrainian complaints about restrictions on Italian aid,” the minister glossed over, later claiming Italy’s contribution to Ukrainian resistance. “We contributed more than any other country; we gave two out of five batteries of our anti-aircraft defence systems,” the minister recalled.