The need for the European Union to take a more active role in financing common European defense, through joint mechanisms and possibly joint debt issuance, was emphasized by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, just before the EU27 Summit. Specifically, speaking to Politico, the prime minister insisted on Thursday that the EU must play a larger role in finding tens of billions of euros to help countries cover increased military spending.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis said he would use the Brussels meeting to call on the Union to move further toward a “tipping point where we realize we must take greater responsibility for European defense” and to support EU-level borrowing for joint projects.
Russia’s war against Ukraine, which includes recent violations of EU airspace by hostile drones and Russian fighter aircraft in recent months, has turned attention to collective security.
Mitsotakis tells Politico: We need European structures and European funding to develop our defense capabilities
“My argument is very simple: if defense is the supreme European public good, we need European structures and European funding to develop our defense capabilities,” Mr. Mitsotakis said in his interview with POLITICO. “There’s an obvious problem. We don’t discuss it openly, but could we imagine a scenario where we would have a common European borrowing facility that would aim to support European defense projects?” he added.
“I would certainly support it, provided there are projects that clearly meet the criteria of European public good… let’s use European money to do things we cannot do at the national level,” Mr. Mitsotakis said.
The report reminds us that while the European Commission has proposed a series of plans to relax fiscal rules and enable capitals to borrow more funds to finance a large-scale rearmament program, countries remain at an impasse regarding the idea of debt sharing to unlock additional capital. A series of cross-border projects have been identified, including anti-drone measures, but realizing investments still largely depends on national governments.
“I think the challenge is whether we can have additional funding and whether this additional funding can be accompanied by conditions that will push us toward stronger preparedness,” Mr. Mitsotakis said, “which would be joint procurement, development of new technologies, especially drones and artificial intelligence, and I think the Commission and European institutions have a clear role to play.”
According to a draft joint statement prepared by ambassadors from all 27 EU countries before Thursday’s summit, the Union will agree to “increasingly orient defense sector investments toward joint development, production and procurement.”
Countries with conservative fiscal policies, such as the Netherlands, traditionally oppose new joint debt mechanisms to enhance other countries’ spending capacity.
Mitsotakis’ message on the “green transition”
In the interview, Mitsotakis also warned about environmental priorities and the “green transition,” as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen faces backlash from countries fearing that green policies and climate neutrality goals harm their economies.
“I have been very, very clear — the green transition cannot be an end in itself,” Mitsotakis said. “Otherwise, we might realize at some point that we’re running the wrong race. It must be balanced with competitiveness and must promote, or at least not hinder, social cohesion.”
“I don’t like to express it in numbers, but the last 10, 15 or 20 percent of the green transition is, at this moment, terrifyingly expensive and we don’t even have the technologies to implement it,” he added.
