The announced that all 19 member states that declared participation in the low-interest mechanism for strengthening European defense submitted their national investment plans on time.
The deadline for the submission of national plans ended on November 30, and according to a message from the Commissioner for Defense, Andrios Koubilius, in “X”, 15 of the 19 member states have included Ukraine in their national plans, with investments totaling “billions”.
Until the end of December the evaluations
For his part, the responsible representative of the Commission, Thomas Rainier, “for reasons of confidentiality”, refused to reveal which countries did not include Ukraine in their plans, while he did not even give an answer about the exact total amount of support to Kiev from the SAFE loans. He said that the Commission intends to evaluate the national plans before the end of the year, based on the terms and conditions of the relevant regulation. If the evaluation is positive, the Commission will ask the Council of the EU (Member States) for the approval of each national plan, in order to follow the first disbursement (up to 15% of the loans approved for each country).
Regarding the participation of third countries in SAFE loans, Thomas Rainier confirmed that it was not possible to reach an agreement between the EU and the United Kingdom, while for Canada he said that “negotiations are going very well” and “an agreement can be reached soon.” He, however, made it clear that the negotiations with these countries are being done so that they can get involved in joint defense projects, with a participation of more than 35%.
Participation of third countries only if the interests of the member states are protected
Asked if Turkey could join the SAFE programs in the future, T. Rainier said that “according to the regulation, all third countries can participate up to 35% – all third countries can be included in the national plans, which the Commission has just received”. He underlined, however, that “the regulation is very clear about protecting the interests of our member states and the EU as a whole. This means that the participation of third countries up to 35% can technically and legally be limited if we judge that there is a need to do so.”
It is recalled that the 19 member states that have applied for loans from SAFE are: Greece, Cyprus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Spain, France, Croatia, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Finland and Denmark.
Greece has requested €1.2 billion in loans from SAFE and the Commission has approved a first amount of €787.67 million.
