{"id":627205,"date":"2025-12-11T23:22:29","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T23:22:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/627205\/"},"modified":"2025-12-11T23:22:29","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T23:22:29","slug":"eu-countries-want-another-defense-fund-says-von-der-leyen-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/627205\/","title":{"rendered":"EU countries want another defense fund, says von der Leyen \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAFE is designed<\/a> to help countries jointly buy arms and ammunition from European industry, financed by low-interest loans. Countries had to file national procurement plans this fall, and demand has exceeded available funds, the Commission president said.<\/p>\n

The Commission chief used the appearance to argue that the past year has reshaped the EU\u2019s defense role<\/a> at unprecedented speed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look at the last year, when it comes to defense, more has happened than during the last decades in the European Union,\u201d she said, pointing to the creation of the EU\u2019s first full-time defense commissioner and the publication of its first defense readiness plan<\/a>.<\/p>\n

She contrasted the bloc\u2019s limited defense spending in the previous decade, when only \u20ac8 billion was invested in defense on the European level, with the surge now underway. \u201cDuring the last year, we enabled an investment \u2026 of \u20ac800 billion till 2030,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Von der Leyen\u2019s acknowledgment that capitals want a \u201csecond SAFE\u201d is part of an ongoing push to continue ramping up defense spending. That is likely to create a major political clash for 2026, when countries will reopen negotiations over the next long-term EU budget, as there are calls for defense spending to be 10 times larger than under the current budget.<\/p>\n

Any effort for countries to borrow jointly to fund defense will also spark pushback from frugal capitals. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAFE is designed to help countries jointly buy arms and ammunition from European industry, financed by low-interest loans.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":627206,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[23404,473,2000,299,5187,7058,1699,2597,7061,1220,1116],"class_list":{"0":"post-627205","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-ammunition","9":"tag-defense","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-defense","14":"tag-european-union","15":"tag-military","16":"tag-procurement","17":"tag-ursula-von-der-leyen","18":"tag-weapons"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115703509710441383","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627205","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=627205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}