{"id":305685,"date":"2025-07-31T04:23:15","date_gmt":"2025-07-31T04:23:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/305685\/"},"modified":"2025-07-31T04:23:15","modified_gmt":"2025-07-31T04:23:15","slug":"eu-members-eye-e127-billion-in-loans-for-defense-procurement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/305685\/","title":{"rendered":"EU members eye \u20ac127 billion in loans for defense procurement"},"content":{"rendered":"

PARIS \u2014 European Union member states expressed interest in at least \u20ac127 billion ($146 billion) in EU-backed loans to pay for defense procurement, the bloc\u2019s executive arm said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Eighteen countries including Italy, Poland, Spain and France expressed interest in accessing the loans under the Security Action for Europe financial instrument, or SAFE, the European Commission said in a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

SAFE is part of EU plans to ramp up defense investment<\/a> announced in March, and will provide up to \u20ac150 billion in \u201ccompetitively priced,\u201d long-maturity loans to EU countries that ask for financial assistance to invest in defense capabilities, according to the Commission.<\/p>\n

\u201cDelighted to see big interest of EU member states in SAFE loans,\u201d EU Commissioner for Defence and Space Andrius Kubilius said in a social media post<\/a>. \u201cThis is a major step towards achieving our defense goals quickly and decisively.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Commission said the early indication of interest will allow it to assess demand and prepare for raising funds on the capital markets. The deadline for formal submission of requests and the submission of national defense investment plans is end-November.<\/p>\n

The loans seek to finance \u201curgent and large-scale procurement efforts,\u201d according to the Commission. Projects will be based on common procurement, involving at least one member state that benefits from SAFE, together with another member state, Ukraine or the EEA-EFTA countries Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, in light of current geopolitical realities, SAFE will also temporarily support procurements by individual member states to ensure timely delivery of critical assets,\u201d the commission said.<\/p>\n

Only EU countries can obtain SAFE loans, though countries that have signed security and defense partnerships with the EU can participate in common procurement, including the United Kingdom, Norway, Canada, South Korea and Japan.<\/p>\n

Under the eligibility conditions for SAFE loans, procurement contracts have to ensure that no more than 35% of component costs comes from outside the EU, Ukraine or EEA-EFTA countries.<\/p>\n

For equipment including air and missile defense systems, maritime surface and underwater capabilities and strategic enablers such as air-to-air refueling, eligibility conditions for procurement contracts are more strict, including the ability for contractors to modify the equipment if necessary, without any non-EU restrictions.<\/p>\n

Rudy Ruitenberg is a Europe correspondent for Defense News. He started his career at Bloomberg News and has experience reporting on technology, commodity markets and politics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PARIS \u2014 European Union member states expressed interest in at least \u20ac127 billion ($146 billion) in EU-backed loans…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":305686,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[5606,9057,5607,5602,2000,299,5187,1699,36,38798,104],"class_list":{"0":"post-305685","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-circulated-defense-news","9":"tag-defense-spending","10":"tag-defense-news","11":"tag-dn-dnr","12":"tag-eu","13":"tag-europe","14":"tag-european","15":"tag-european-union","16":"tag-france","17":"tag-safe","18":"tag-spain"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114945943472301958","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305685","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=305685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}