Three years ago, the large -scale invasion of Ukraine in Russia convinced European leaders that they had to spend more money on defense. Monday, the leaders of the European Union and Great Britain will meet in Brussels to debate a thorny question: how to pay for this.
It is a concern more acute by President Trump’s return to the White House.
The United States is the largest military donor of the Ukraine war effort, but Trump suggested that he would quickly remove American financial and military support and leave it to Europeans. He also insisted that NATO nations accelerate defense spending at 5% of their annual economic production, a drastic increase compared to 3% or 3.5% of NATO plans to reach its Objective at its next summit meeting this summer.
The United States itself spends only about 3.4% of the gross domestic product in defense.
With the war, the European Union, which was based on free trade and qualified as a “peace project”, has become more involved in deterrence and defense. It is now rushing to extend its defense industries and making expenses more efficient and collaborative. Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Great Britain will attend the meeting on Monday, the first time since Great Britain left the European Union that a British chief met the 27 block leaders in Brussels.
Part of the debate will be whether the European Union will be able to collect more money to pay the defense thanks to a common debt, as it did to fight Covid.
But the question is thorny: such a collection of joint funds could hinder the efforts of member countries to meet the individual requirements that the NATO alliance is already in terms of military budgets. Of the 27 EU countries which will meet during the session in camera on Monday, 23 are members of NATO.
