After Poland, Belgium pleads to exclude military spending from EU national rules
In a report published this month, the Court of Auditors revealed that the Ministry of the Armed Forces would have to find budgetary leeway – and therefore to make capacity choices – with regard to the state of public finances, which are is aggravated by the effect of the measures taken during the covid-19 pandemic, with a public deficit of 7% of GDP and a public debt of around 120% of GDP. What’s more, the current context favors inflation… and therefore a rise in what are called factor costs [notamment pour ce qui concerne l’énergie].
Clearly, France happily exceeds the famous Maastricht criteria for the euro zone, [un déficit et une dette ne devant respectivement pas dépasser 3% et 60% du PIB, ndlr], which were suspended during the covid-19 crisis. That said, the European Commission has carried out a review of the rules of economic governance of the Union… And some voices are being heard to make them more flexible, in order to facilitate investments in terms of ecological transition…
But this re-examination could also be the occasion to put on the table an already old idea: that consisting in “taking out” military expenditure from these budgetary criteria. One would have thought that France was going to make such a claim by taking advantage of its presidency of the Council of the European Union… Especially since it would arrange its affairs.
Thus, in December 2013, when he was Defense Minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian pleaded, like a certain Bruno Le Maire, who retained his portfolio as Minister of the Economy in the new government, to remove the additional costs of external operations from the calculation of deficits. “France is helping to secure Europe. As such, it would therefore be logical that these financial moderations could be excluded from the calculations of the European minimum deficit,” he said.
In February 2015, Mr. Le Drian returned to the charge, stating that “the idea of excluding military expenditure from the calculation of public deficits [commençait] to be heard at European level. And to add: “We must continue in this direction”. However, the matter stopped there. The invasion of Ukraine by Russia, which only confirms a trend started with the annexation of Crimea, will it move the lines?
In any case, the Belgian Defense Minister, Ludivine Dedonder, put this proposal back on the table, on the airwaves of RTBF, on May 30, when Belgium plans to increase its military spending to 2% of GDP at the end of the year. horizon 2035 [contre 1,54% actuellement]. This is not without causing some tension within the government majority, environmentalists and socialists not being in favor of it because such an effort, according to them, could be made at the expense of social and environmental policies…
“We must take the time to reflect, to analyze the evolution of the geopolitical situation, of the conflict in particular, of the shortcomings of the European Union’s capacities, of NATO’s new strategic concept, but it is not closing the door out of dogmatism… Increasing the Defense budget is not indecent when there is a war on the European continent, but this should not be done at the expense of increasing purchasing power, social security or public services”, first argued Ms. Dedonder, member of the Belgian PS.
Also, she continued, the solution would be to obtain an agreement at European level so that “defence expenditure is no longer weighted in the public debt”. The Belgian Prime Minister, Alexandre de Croo, must “defend this position at this level”, she insisted.
Could such a proposal materialize now? This is not excluded given that, for the most part, EU member countries have announced significant increases in their military spending… This is particularly the case of Italy [+10 milliards dès cette année] but also that of so-called “frugal” states, such as the Netherlands [+2 milliards, qui vendront s’ajouter à une première hausse de 3 milliards déjà prévue en 2022] and, of course, Germany, which is going to review its basic law to create a special fund of 100 billion euros for the Bundeswehr.
Moreover, Belgium is not the only one to push this idea: Poland is also in favor of it. In March, the head of the Polish government, Mateusz Morawiecki, assured that it was even gaining ground within the European Council.
The war in Ukraine “has completely upset the geopolitical order in Europe and indeed the whole world” and “if Poland wants to pay back 3% of its GDP soon for its defense policy, while other countries spend 1 %, it would not be normal for us to be penalized by the European Commission for exceeding the budget deficit at the level of 3%”, pleaded Mr Morawiecki.