The reduction to €7 billion of the European Defence Fund (EDF) by the European Council in the negotiations on the 2021-2027 Multiannual Financial Framework, compared to the €13 billion initially planned, is not viewed favourably by the European Parliament, according to comments gleaned on Wednesday 22 July.
Zdzisław Krasnodębski (ECR, Poland), European Parliament rapporteur on this fund, particularly regretted these budget cuts. The European Commission’s initial proposal setting the EDF budget at €13 billion had already left some experts perplexed, he highlighted. With €7 billion, some supranational cooperation projects in this area may not be able to be carried out, as well as the objective of opening up the sector to new players, he continued.
Above all, the fact that the entire European defence budget corresponds to €13 billion, which is what the Commission proposed for the European Defence Fund alone, “says a lot about the lack of interest of member states in defence cooperation for the benefit of other Community policies and the limited role that the defence industry will play in the continent’s economic recovery”, he said.
“The dead-on-arrival ambitions of a European strategic autonomy”, Arnaud Danjean (France) tersely concluded on his Twitter account. “Especially since defence is not only limited to the European Defence Fund (which has been reduced from €13 billion to €7 billion), but also the military mobility line (from €6 billion to €1.5 billion) and the European Peace Facility (from €11 billion to €5 billion)”, he recalled.
On the other hand, the shadow rapporteur for the EDF for the GUE/NGL, Marc Botenga (Belgium), welcomed the budget proposed by the Member States. “This budget will be lower than the European Commission’s initial proposal, which is very good, but still far too high. Personally, I would have preferred to see the €7 billion allocated to the health programme, which is now being reduced to nothing”, he added, referring to the reduction of the health programme to €1.6 billion.
The European Parliament is set to adopt a resolution deploring the budget cuts to the Fund.
Defence sector disappointed
Contacted by EUROPE, the ASD, which represents the defence and security industry sector, also regretted the outcome of the summit, finding such a decision “difficult to understand at a time when Europe’s security environment is increasingly unstable and European armed forces face severe and urgent capability gaps”.
For the ASD, the EDF is a “crucial catalyst” for European defence cooperation and could have positive multiplier effects on the economy, especially indirectly for civil aeronautics, which has been particularly hard hit by the Covid-19 crisis.
The ASD wants a return to a budget of “at least” €13 billion. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)