{"id":57417,"date":"2025-04-28T12:20:08","date_gmt":"2025-04-28T12:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/57417\/"},"modified":"2025-04-28T12:20:08","modified_gmt":"2025-04-28T12:20:08","slug":"germany-triggers-eus-emergency-clause-for-defense-spending-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/57417\/","title":{"rendered":"Germany triggers EU\u2019s emergency clause for defense spending \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

BRUSSELS \u2015 Germany has asked the European Union to activate an emergency clause that would allow it to rapidly increase defense investment without breaching the bloc’s spending rules.<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s continued war of aggression against Ukraine and the “changing environment” in global security “requires a significant build-up of defense capabilities with a major impact on its public finances,” acting Finance Minister J\u00f6rg\u00a0Kukies wrote in a letter<\/a> dated April 24\u00a0and obtained by POLITICO.<\/p>\n

The European Commission’s emergency clause would give EU governments the ability to increase defense spending up to 1.5 percent of gross domestic product each year for four years as part of its broader plan to speed up the bloc\u2019s rearmament. It asked governments to coordinate their requests if possible and to present them by April 30. <\/p>\n

While other big European countries such as Italy or Spain are reluctant to increase their debt to buy military equipment, Germany, which doesn’t have a debt problem, has made rearmament a political priority.<\/p>\n

The German parliament recently passed a constitutional reform<\/a> that allows far greater rearmament spending. Incoming chancellor Friedrich Merz’s governing coalition, set to start work next month, agreed to a \u20ac1 trillion package of military and infrastructure investment. <\/p>\n

The letter, to European Economy Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis and Polish Finance Minister Andrzej Doma\u0144ski, in his role coordinating EU finance ministers’ work, said the move would avoid a huge reallocation of the German budget away from other priorities.<\/p>\n

Kukies also used the letter to lobby the Commission to introduce a wider definition of “defense” when it comes to defining spending. He suggested using the NATO definition because it \u201cadequately reflects the multiple threats to security in Europe\u201d and considering \u201cin particular dual-use expenditure.”<\/p>\n

Chris Lunday reported from Berlin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BRUSSELS \u2015 Germany has asked the European Union to activate an emergency clause that would allow it to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":57418,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[1194,473,728,2000,299,474,1824,1197,11582,5111,332,811,657,12923,771],"class_list":{"0":"post-57417","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-budget","9":"tag-defense","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-finance","14":"tag-germany","15":"tag-investment","16":"tag-lobbying","17":"tag-parliament","18":"tag-russia","19":"tag-security","20":"tag-ukraine","21":"tag-valdis-dombrovskis","22":"tag-war"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114415561837737612","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57417","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=57417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57417\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}