BRUSSELS — Eighteen countries requested €127 billion in cheap loans from the European Commission by Tuesday’s deadline to boost their defense and potentially buy arms for Ukraine.
In a major win for the Commission, countries spanning Estonia to Portugal asked to take part in its Security Assistance Facility for Europe (SAFE) loans-for-weapons scheme, which offered up to €150 billion in low-interest loans.
The initiative is part of the Commission’s broader ReArm Europe program, proposed in March, which aims to reduce the bloc’s decades-long military dependence on the United States.
The Commission wrote in a statement on Wednesday that the following countries expressed an interest in taking the loans: Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Spain, Finland, Hungary and Lithuania, Slovakia, Latvia, Croatia, Poland, Greece, Portugal, Romania, France and Italy.
In their request to the Commission, countries set out a minimum and maximum amount they will formally request to borrow later in the year. This paves the way for the EU executive to tap financial markets and borrow on behalf of its 27 member countries.
The Commission did not report the figures for each country, but Poland’s Deputy Prime Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz wrote on X that Warsaw requested €45 billion — likely the highest request from any individual country.
“The strong interest in SAFE, with at least €127 billion in potential defence procurements, demonstrates the EU’s unity and ambition in security and defence,” the EU’s defense commissioner, Andrius Kubilius, wrote in a statement.
By jointly buying weapons through SAFE, countries can secure a lower price than they would by going it alone, and can pay back the cheap loans over a 45-year timeframe. Ukraine’s top allies said they will use the scheme to deliver armaments to the war-battered country.
The Commission said that Tuesday was only a “soft deadline” and that latecomers won’t be turned away. Countries must formally submit the loan request and defense projects they intend to carry out under SAFE before a Nov. 30 deadline.
The post EU capitals ask Brussels for nearly €130B to spend on defense appeared first on Politico.
