EU struggles with defense funding shortfall, but creative ideas exist, MEP says
Chair of the Subcommittee on Security and Defence of the European Parliament Nathalie Loiseau (Photo: Vitalii Nosach, RBC-Ukraine)
The European Union has allocated insufficient funds for the defense industry. However, there are initiatives underway to change the situation, states the Chair of the Subcommittee on Security and Defence of the European Parliament, Nathalie Loiseau, at a briefing in Kyiv.
She has noted that the EU needs to make its military production more extensive in light of Russia's war against Ukraine, stating that it is both a 21st-century war using very high-tech equipment and a very traditional war.
She states that in this case, the essence of the problem is money.
She says that recently the EuroCouncil instructed the EuroCommission to develop a series of creative proposals. Currently, the European defense industrial program is budgeted at 1.5 billion euros for two years, which is not much.
According to her, the EU has creative ideas, such as the possibility of pre-ordering more military equipment than needed at the moment by one member state, which has surplus military equipment, to sell it to such partners as Ukraine or use it for a specific military operation.
Loiseau clarifies that currently, the EU cannot demand the defense industry to create its own reserves because it costs a lot of money. Therefore, such funding should be provided for better preparedness.
According to her, this initiative is a proposal from the EuroCommission, so it needs to go through the Council and the European Parliament, but she is confident in the majority.
Part of the whole scheme is supporting Ukraine's defense industry and including it in the European program, she explains.
Background
Earlier, the head of EU diplomacy, Josep Borrell, called on Europe to take a "leap forward" in defense industry matters.
According to him, much remains to be done to meet the scale of the threats facing the EU.
