By Andrew Gray<\/p>\n
BRUSSELS, Dec 11 (Reuters) – The European Commission is considering launching a second edition of its multi-billion-euro SAFE \u200bloans scheme for defence projects as Europe seeks to bolster \u200cits defences due to growing fears of Russia and doubts about U.S. security \u200ccommitments, according to two EU officials.<\/p>\n
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Thursday evening at an event hosted by Politico in Brussels that the original 150 billion euro ($176 billion) scheme had been so \u2060over-subscribed that some EU \u200cmembers were now calling for a second one.<\/p>\n
The two EU officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to \u200ddiscuss internal deliberations, said the Commission was actively looking into the idea.<\/p>\n
Under the SAFE scheme, the EU jointly borrowed money on the market to lend \u200bit on at cost to EU governments for their defence projects. \u200cFor most countries that do not have a AAA credit rating like the EU does this means major savings.<\/p>\n
In addition, the loans can be for up to 45 years and have a 10-year grace period for principal repayments.<\/p>\n
The Commission received applications for loans worth \u2060some 190 billion euros under the \u200bexisting SAFE scheme, suggesting there was strong \u200bdemand for a second version, one of the officials said. But the official said it was too early \u200dto say how \u2060much money might be available under a second scheme.<\/p>\n
“I think we will need to develop that instrument. The question is when,” \u2060said the official, suggesting next year might be the ideal time. “There are legitimate \u200carguments as to why it is important to have \u200cit.”<\/p>\n
($1 = 0.8519 euros)<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Andrew Gray)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Andrew Gray BRUSSELS, Dec 11 (Reuters) – The European Commission is considering launching a second edition of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":627210,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[194475,2000,80637,299,5187,2557,126512,1220],"class_list":{"0":"post-627209","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-defence-projects","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-eu-members","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-commission","14":"tag-scheme","15":"tag-ursula-von-der-leyen"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115703517507879145","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627209","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=627209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}