On Thursday 20 March, Europe’s leaders called for an acceleration of work on all strands “to decisively ramp up Europe’s defence readiness within the next five years”.
In the conclusions they adopted, the European leaders called on the co-legislators to swiftly take work forward on the recent Commission proposals. Many of them welcomed the White Paper - ‘European Defence - Readiness 2030’ presented the day before by the European Commission. “We have a strategy for fully rearming Europe over the next five years, which is the right pace for the European budget and national budgets alike”, said French President Emmanuel Macron.
The European Council also urged that implementation of the actions decided on 6 March in the field of capabilities should begin “as a matter of urgency” and that work should continue on the relevant financing options.
On his arrival at the summit, the Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, called for “a more in-depth discussion on whether these financing options should be limited to loans or whether we are prepared to go further by considering subsidies for European Member States”, in addition to loans - as is the case with the SAFE instrument. For his part, the Dutch Prime Minister, Dick Schoof, reiterated his opposition to Eurobonds.
The Greek and Irish Prime Ministers, the Lithuanian President and the Austrian Chancellor highlighted the national escape clause of the Stability and Growth Pact, which will allow Member States to derogate from the rules in order to finance defence.
While the leaders want to strengthen European defence, they also recall that “a stronger and more capable European Union in the field of security and defence will contribute positively to global and transatlantic security and is complementary to NATO, which remains, for those States that are members of it, the foundation of their collective defence”. “The aim should be for the European pillar of NATO to be as strong as possible, and less dependent on the others”, summed up the Finnish Prime Minister, Petteri Orpo, on his arrival at the summit.
To see the conclusions: https://aeur.eu/f/g1s (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant with the editorial staff)