[Intime News]
Greece will ask the European Commission to exempt its 2026 defence spending from the EU’s budget rules as part of the so-called fiscal escape clause, its finance minister said on Tuesday.
The country will submit a request later on Tuesday seeking to exempt defence spending worth 500 million euros ($569.60 million) earmarked for 2026, less than 0.3% of its GDP, Finance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis told public broadcaster ERT.
“The increase [in spending] planned from 2025 to 2026 is approximately half a billion euros that has been planned and this also concerns the following years. There is a very specific defense spending program that we have presented as a government,” the minister said, adding that the 500 million euros in the 2026 budget are excluded from the spending rule calculation.
[Reuters/Kathimerini]