Defence, Kubilius to Italy: “I hope you find a way to increase spending”

Brussels – The financial instruments made available by the EU to increase national military spending “obviously also depend on the fiscal situation of each country.” It is true, and those who do not have the space to get into debt with SAFE loans and the activation of the national safeguard clause of the Stability and Growth Pact, should find other ways. On a visit to Rome, the European Commissioner for Defence, Andrius Kubilius, offers no other recourse to the Italian government and “hopes” that it will “find the best way to implement the need to increase defence spending effectively“. 

The Lithuanian Commissioner and the Minister for Enterprise and Made in Italy, Adolfo Urso, visited the Thales Alenia Aerospace Italia Space Factory at the Fucino Space Centre and Avio Aerospace. He then travelled to Montecitorio for a joint session of the European Affairs and Defence Committees, where he presented the latest developments on the European rearming plan and future strategies for the integration of defence and space in Europe. 

“We have two important tasks ahead of us: to increase our deterrence capabilities towards Russia and to realise concrete capabilities in the long term, in order to be ready in the face of a US demotion on the European continent,” Kubilius told MPs. On the one hand, in the short term, German intelligence services “predicted that Russia might be ready in the next five years to put Article 5 of NATO to the test” (which states that if one country of the Alliance is attacked, all others are obliged to assist it). On the other hand, “due to the military rise of China, the United States will increasingly shift its resources to the Indo-Pacific and decrease its presence on the European continent,” he explained.

The EU must change gear and take responsibility when it comes to security. Kubilius spoke of “trillions of additional expenditure to be incurred in the area of defence”. More than the 800 billion that, quite optimistically, Ursula von der Leyen had planned to mobilise in the coming years through the widening of the Stability and Growth Pact and the 150 billion facility for loans guaranteed by the EU budget. 

For now, about two-thirds of the member states have planned to use the emergency clause to spend up to 1.5 per cent of GDP on defence investments over the next four years without violating deficit and debt rules. Doubts persist in several capitals on the SAFE instrument, which the 27 will formally approve tomorrow (27 May). Rome included. 

Admitting that the use of EU instruments “obviously depends on the fiscal situation of each country”, and emphasising that “Prime Minister Meloni is really doing a lot to strengthen European security” by firmly supporting Ukraine, Kubilius however made it clear: “We must always understand that defence is the implementation of the most important value of solidarity in Europe, because European defence is based on the principle of collective defence. And if one member state does not invest enough in its own defence, it also reduces the defence capabilities of all other member states.”