EU not ready for Eurobonds to boost defence spending, says Commissioner Kubilius
The EU executive proposed in early March a five-point plan to rearm and reach defence readiness by 2030. In an exclusive interview, EU defence commissioner Andrius Kubilius told Euronews he expects member states to make use of options proposed in the plan instead of issuing more joint debt.
READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2025/03/26/eu-not-ready-for-eurobonds-to-boost-defence-spending-says-commissioner-kubilius
Subscribe to our channel. Euronews is available on Dailymotion in 12 languages
The EU executive proposed in early March a five-point plan to rearm and reach defence readiness by 2030. In an exclusive interview, EU defence commissioner Andrius Kubilius told Euronews he expects member states to make use of options proposed in the plan instead of issuing more joint debt.
READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2025/03/26/eu-not-ready-for-eurobonds-to-boost-defence-spending-says-commissioner-kubilius
Subscribe to our channel. Euronews is available on Dailymotion in 12 languages
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00The EU is not yet ready to issue so-called Eurobonds to boost much-needed defence capabilities.
00:08In an exclusive interview with Euronews, the EU's defence commissioner said he expected
00:13member states to make use of the five proposed options under the Rearming Europe plan before
00:18considering further steps.
00:20Eurobonds, you know, it means that the European Union will have the bigger debts which will
00:27need to be serviced again by all the member states and now we have exactly in some ways
00:34a challenge what to do with the Eurobonds which were issued during pandemic, how to
00:41repay.
00:42The EU's debt payments from the grants issued in response to the COVID-19 pandemic are expected
00:48to run between 25 and 30 billion annually, which the bloc has not yet decided how to
00:53repay.
00:54For the next four years, in some kind of idealistic scenario, if all the member states will start
01:01to spend 3.5%, during the next four years it will be 2.4 trillion euros spent on defence.
01:08So it's quite a big amount of money.
01:11The question is, will it cover all the needs or we shall need to have additional funding?
01:18To achieve this, the EU is trying to give its member states more fiscal leeway to increase
01:23defence spending.
01:24But first, they have to agree on what they mean by defence spending.
01:30Countries such as Spain and Italy argue that the definition should be broadened to include
01:34spending on counter-terrorism, climate change and other security investments.
01:39Kubelius disagrees.
01:41We need to fight against climate change.
01:43We need to fight for social things which are also very important.
01:51But let's do it job by job.
01:55Defence is defence.
01:56The EU has quadrupled production since the start of Russian military aggression in Ukraine,
02:02but more efforts will be needed to catch up with Russian production.