The March 20 European Council was supposed to be\u00a0the culmination of the shared\u00a0conviction to move in the desired direction after the “ten days that shook the world” a few weeks ago, starting\u00a0with Zelenski’s ouster from the Oval Office, the change of pace of American policy on Ukraine\u00a0and beyond, and continuing with the ambitious ReArm Europe proposal, immediately sealed by Germany’s\u00a0spectacular decision bring to an end, with some institutional tricks, the Constitutional public spending cap\u00a0and\u00a0announce a 1 trillion investment plan, half of which for defense.<\/p>\n
However, on closer inspection, Ursula von der Leyen’s “announcement effect” risks\u00a0not being supported by enthusiastic adherence to the initial plan, so much so that the heads of state and government have taken adequate time to\u00a0reflect, in a context made complex by Russian-American negotiations bypassing the\u00a0heads of European countries, including Ukraine, and the threat of trade tariffs.<\/p>\n
The first to falter\u00a0was the very name of the plan to earmark 800 billion over four years for additional military spending to move closer to the new GDP-based targets that\u00a0Donald Trump is loudly demanding, which the June NATO summit should decide on.<\/p>\n
From the outset, ReArm Europe was not\u00a0the most fitting\u00a0acronym for the\u00a0European Commission to come up with, so much so that it was prudently decided to rename it to the anonymous Readiness 2030, whatever that may mean.<\/p>\n
However, the most apparent\u00a0difficulties immediately emerged regarding\u00a0the substance, as the German move made clear. Thanks to the “general escape clause,”\u00a0meaning the suspension of the Stability Pact, the bulk of the money will have to come from member states (those who can afford it):\u00a0those, for example, with a debt-to-GDP ratio of less than 60 percent and were able to bring themselves into compliance domestically in 48 hours. However, it will be m<\/span>ore difficult for those whose\u00a0debt ratio is over 130% of GDP.<\/p>\n There are then the 150 billion in loans promised by Ursula von der Leyen based on guarantees offered by the EU budget. But again, new loans would burden national budgets because the frugals, led by Germany, reject any assumption of defense bonds or loans\u00a0as in the case of the Recovery Fund.<\/p>\n In short, it is a dichotomy\u00a0where\u00a0the heavily indebted countries of the South view with suspicion\u00a0a plan that, at least for now, has\u00a0a strong German accent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The March 20 European Council was supposed to be\u00a0the culmination of the shared\u00a0conviction to move in the desired direction after the “ten days that shook the world” a few weeks ago, starting\u00a0with Zelenski’s ouster from the Oval Office, the change of pace of American policy on Ukraine\u00a0and beyond, and continuing with the ambitious ReArm Europe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7592,"featured_media":249452,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25711,30809],"tags":[27336,30842,30843],"class_list":["post-422527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinions","category-defence-security","tag-800billion","tag-spesa-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7592"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422527"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":422594,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422527\/revisions\/422594"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}