5% of GDP spending<\/a> that NATO members committed to in June. <\/p>\nAt the meeting, which was also attended by Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto and Italy\u2019s finance and foreign ministers, Meloni asked the CEOs to \u201ccreate a strategy to identify the principal ways to invest.\u201d<\/p>\n
She asked them to \u201cmaximize dual-use investments\u201d that provide benefits both inside and outside the defense industry, and \u201cseek compatibility between our investments and those made by our European partners,\u201d suggesting a focus on joint EU defense programs.<\/p>\n
The EU has already specified that spending based on SAFE loans should invest in fields including air and missile defense, artillery, missiles, drones and cyber warfare.<\/p>\n
As well as discussing the possibility of Italy signing up to the SAFE scheme, Meloni cited a second EU-backed plan launched this year to allow member states to ramp up defense spending even if it drives their national deficit spending over the EU limit of 3%.<\/p>\n
The government source told Defense News that Italy would not take advantage of the plan immediately since its overall spending has already pushed its deficit over 3%.<\/p>\n
\u201cItaly may drop under 3% in 2026 and could at that point take advantage of the EU plan on deficit defense spending,\u201d said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n
Leonardo, meanwhile, is already planning how to deal with the massive influx of revenue coming its way when Italy takes the SAFE loans. In a presentation to analysts on July 30, CEO Roberto Cingolani said Italy\u2019s finance ministry had told him the loans could total \u20ac18-20 billion, more than the \u20ac15 billion suggested by the government source.<\/p>\n
He said the result could be a \u20ac4 billion top-up to Italy\u2019s defense spending budget every year for five years, helping push Italy from its current 2% of GDP spending towards NATO\u2019s new 5% target.<\/p>\n
With every percentage point hike in Italy\u2019s defense budget, Leonardo would see extra revenue of \u20ac2-2.5 billion, he said.<\/p>\n
In his presentation, Cingolani said new orders already meant that Leonardo\u2019s 2024 revenue of \u20ac17.8 billion was due to rise to \u20ac24 billion by 2029. Adding in the extra revenue thanks to the EU loans could boost revenue by another \u20ac4-6 billion, he added.<\/p>\n
To get ready for the sudden growth, Leonardo had already created a panel of seven industry experts to manage a \u201cCapacity Boost\u201d program covering engineering, manufacturing, procurement, supply chain, human resources and project management issues.<\/p>\n
The key, Cingolani said, was flexibility rather than focusing on just new hires and building new facilities. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t want to find out in five years that we have gigantic installations and don\u2019t have demand anymore,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Tom Kington is the Italy correspondent for Defense News.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Italian government and industry leaders are rushing this week to figure out how to spend a European Union-backed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":326106,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[5606,5607,5602,2000,299,5187,1699,59248,2440,2199,2127],"class_list":{"0":"post-326105","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-news","10":"tag-dn-dnr","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-european","14":"tag-european-union","15":"tag-fincantieri","16":"tag-giorgia-meloni","17":"tag-italy","18":"tag-leonardo"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114989421330437588","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326105","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=326105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}