“Article 122 is an unfortunate choice in terms of monitoring budgetary control, but also from the legislative control perspective”, lamented Karlo Ressler (EPP, Croatian) in the European Parliament’s Committee on Budgets on Wednesday 23 April.
The ‘SAFE’ instrument (Security Action for Europe) is intended to provide €150 billion in loans to States so that they can acquire military equipment (see EUROPE 13603/8). By using Article 122, which can be used in the event of “exceptional circumstances” – in this case, war and the threat of withdrawal of US military support to Ukraine – the European Commission wanted to move more quickly with this proposal for a Regulation. As Parliament was simply informed of the decision taken, it is excluded from the discussion.
The Chair of Parliament’s Committee on Security and Defence, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, has called for Parliament to be “informed at regular intervals so that we can monitor what is being done”.
The need to increase funding for EU security and defence was not called into question. Only the way in which this was achieved was questioned. Some MEPs pointed out, for example, that recourse to borrowing would risk “undermining our fiscal capacity in the future” (Karlo Ressler, EPP) and that these urgent military needs “will be paid for by our grandchildren, since there is a 10-year grace period and repayment over 45 years”, according to Jean-Marc Germain (S&D, French). He and his group are calling for the adoption of new own resources, which would avoid “increasing borrowing”. (Original version in French by Florent Servia)