The leaders of all European Union member states have backed a defence plan that would see several hundred billion euro spent to boost Europe’s military capability.
An emergency summit in Brussels yesterday also featured discussion on ways to provide significantly more military and financial aid to help Ukraine in its war with Russia and to compensate for the possible withdrawal of US support for Kyiv.
After several turbulent weeks that exposed a growing gap between Donald Trump’s administration and traditional US allies in Europe, there was a commitment from EU leaders to do much more to safeguard their own security.
They backed proposals on defence spending that would potentially free up several hundred billion euros to bolster European militaries.
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The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm led by Ursula von der Leyen, plans to borrow €150 billion to fund loans that would be given to national capitals to spend on defence. It is proposed that defence spending would be exempt from strict EU restrictions aimed at keeping national budget deficits in check.
Speaking on her way into the meeting, Ms von der Leyen said Europe was facing a “watershed moment”, with big decisions about its future security needing to be made.
Germany’s caretaker chancellor Olaf Scholz said further changes to EU rules would be needed later on so that capitals could “spend as much on defence as they see fit”.
A joint statement negotiated by EU leaders said Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine, and the continuing war there, should be seen as an “existential challenge” for Europe.
Most of the 27 national leaders agreed that Ukraine needed substantially more support due to the uncertain future of crucial military aid that had flowed from the US.
However, they did not agree on how much could be committed to Kyiv in any package of further support.
Hungary’s populist right-wing prime minister Viktor Orban, a long-time supporter of the US president, has opposed EU efforts to send additional military aid to Ukraine. The stance is likely to fray the already-strained relations between Mr Orban and other EU leaders keen to do more to help Ukraine.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy joined the EU summit for part of the discussion, briefing leaders on the state of play on the battlefield.
Mr Zelenskiy, whom Mr Trump publicly harangued during a White House visit last month, thanked European leaders for making sure Ukraine was “not alone” in its fight with Russia.
Before the summit, Micheál Martin said any increase to the level of Irish defence spending would be “manageable” within the State’s existing budget.
He rejected the suggestion that spending more on defence was a threat to Ireland’s policy of military neutrality or that other priority areas such as housing and health would lose out.
The Taoiseach said the commission’s plan to provide loans to EU states and ease spending rules would be of more benefit to countries under greater financial pressures.
He said Irish troops would not be involved in any “deterrent force” posted to Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire, but he said the Government was open to Irish involvement in a peacekeeping “monitoring mission”.
The emergency EU summit was called at short noticefollowing fears Europe was being cut out of talks led by the US to end the Ukraine war.
EU capitals are concerned that Mr Trump intends to push Ukraine to accept a peace settlement on terms that are more favourable to Russia than the country it invaded three years ago.
