The 27 EU nations have yet to agree a mandate for taking forward the next stage of talks, with governments divided over how much they should cooperate with external allies on procurement.<\/p>\n
Anne Fort, deputy head of cabinet for defense at the European Commission, told a defense conference in London Friday: \u201cIf we want the industry to be part of SAFE \u2026 we will also have to define a financial contribution that the U.K. will have to make.\u201d<\/p>\n
The U.K. will also need to say whether it wants both big companies and smaller suppliers to be allowed to take part, she said.<\/p>\n
A second senior EU defense official confirmed that discussions would now center on the U.K.\u2019s level of contributions to the SAFE budget, and a 35 percent cap applied to components produced outside the EU.<\/p>\n
In a more favorable outcome for London, the 35 percent limit could be varied in order to make it more attractive to participate in the program. If the EU takes a tougher line, the U.K. would not only have to accept the cap on parts, but its participation could be limited to project-specific borrowing.<\/p>\n
One diplomat from an EU country was adamant the fund should not be used\u00a0by London\u00a0to strengthen\u00a0only\u00a0U.K. companies, meaning that a way must be found for U.K. bids to help strengthen EU firms,\u00a0as the deal should work both ways. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 27 EU nations have yet to agree a mandate for taking forward the next stage of talks,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[22707,768,802,1395,2437,6215,473,2000,299,5187,1699,805,36,806,807,2597,809,7061,332,811,413,6648,1201,657,15,49,1220,333,335],"class_list":{"0":"post-132164","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-armaments","9":"tag-borders","10":"tag-brexit","11":"tag-china","12":"tag-companies","13":"tag-cooperation","14":"tag-defense","15":"tag-eu","16":"tag-europe","17":"tag-european","18":"tag-european-union","19":"tag-foreign-policy","20":"tag-france","21":"tag-industry","22":"tag-keir-starmer","23":"tag-military","24":"tag-negotiations","25":"tag-procurement","26":"tag-russia","27":"tag-security","28":"tag-space","29":"tag-supply-chains","30":"tag-trade","31":"tag-ukraine","32":"tag-united-kingdom","33":"tag-united-states","34":"tag-ursula-von-der-leyen","35":"tag-vladimir-putin","36":"tag-war-in-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114571861363075378","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}