European Union (E.U.) members on Tuesday agreed the urgent outlay of a new 170-billion-dollar (150-billion-euro) loan programme to help rearmament and respond to President Donald Trump’s demand the zone begin to rely more on its own resources and less on U.S. taxpayers for funding.
The SAFE borrowing scheme backed by the E.U.’s central budget was proposed by Brussels in March while the bloc rushes to boost its defences as Russia shows no sign of retreating from its aggressive push into the east through Ukraine, AFP reports.
The text of the agreement received final approval at a meeting of Europe ministers in Brussels. In all 26 countries voted for and one abstention, the presidency said.
France’s Europe minister Benjamin Haddad called SAFE “a major step forward” that asserts “a very clear principle of European preference to support our industries, reduce our dependencies including from the United States, and invest in Europe’s strategic autonomy.”
“But it is just one step — and we will need to go further,” Haddad told reporters in Brussels, per the AFP report.
Trump has piled pressure on Europe by insisting he wants NATO to agree to devote five percent of GDP to defence with promises already made, as Breitbart News reported.
Trump has previously criticized the cost of the war in Ukraine for U.S. taxpayers through major military aid packages and made clear he wants to shift more of the fiscal burden back across the Atlantic.
The new European borrowing programme is part of a package of measures including loosening budget rules that Brussels says could potentially unlock 800 billion euros of defence spending.
AFP contributed to this report
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