2023-12-01 03:04:08
Record increase in military spending in the EU in 2023
Military spending in the European Union has reached a record sum of around 270 billion euros, some 30 billion more than in 2022, the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, announced on Thursday in a speech at the headquarters of the European Defense Agency (EDA).
This is the ninth year of growth in a row for EU countries, many of which are calling for a significant increase in spending due to the war in Ukraine. In 2022, six of the twenty-seven member states have increased their military spending by more than 10% and even by more than 30% in the case of Sweden, a country awaiting ratification of its membership of the Organization of the North Atlantic Treaty (NATO).
France, for its part, only increased its military spending by 0.7% in 2022, according to the EDA. The Twenty-Seven as a whole devoted 1.5% of their gross domestic product to the defense sector, far from the 2% objective set by NATO. Twenty-two are members of the Alliance. Some 58 billion euros were earmarked for investments in the defense sector, according to the European agency.
With “60 billion euros per year, we can do great things”starting with a “single defense market”in order to avoid the dispersion of resources and to achieve economies of scale, underlined Charles Michel. “With the war on our continent, we can guarantee long-term contracts” to industrialists, he continued, adding: “Produce and we will buy. »
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