European leaders will debate today and tomorrow “explore all possible options” to “mobilize” funds with which to finance their new defense needs, states the latest draft of conclusions of the summit that begins today in Brussels, which “invites” the Bank European Investment Bank (EIB) to “adapt” its lending policy to support the defense industry but “safeguarding its financial capacity,” he adds, referring to its high credit rating.
“We are facing the greatest security threat since the Second World War, it is time to take radical and concrete measures to be prepared for defense and put the EU economy on a war footing,” writes the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, in his letter of invitation to the summit. He does not cite them, but Michel is among the defenders not only of the EIB being more powerful in this field, but of the issuance of “eurobonds” to finance these acquisitions, as is the high representative of Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, and the European Commissioner for Industry, Thierry Breton, defend today in La Vanguardia.
The mention of exploring “all possible formulas” to finance military spending leaves the door open to the initiative led by France, Poland and Estonia to launch a joint debt issue for this purpose, but the initiative is notably opposed by Germany. .
The German Government, however, has moved and this week joined the letter written by more than a dozen countries in favor of a greater role for the EIB in the defense sector. “We are going step by step. On Tuesday I was with German Chancellor Olaf Sholz. We try to find solutions that are digestible for everyone,” Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas commented yesterday, conciliatory. “I am not obsessed with Eurobonds. The important thing is to find financing,” she said.
The other war of the moment, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, will also occupy an important place on the agenda of European leaders, who today will have lunch with the Secretary General of the UN, António Guterres, to address the situation in Gaza and the financing of the United Nations Palestine Refugee Agency (UNRWA). The positions of the Twenty-Seven are evolving, several diplomatic sources confirm, and the European Council will try to update its common position to call for a ceasefire, instead of limiting itself to talking about “humanitarian pauses.”
