March 4, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\nSeparately, von der Leyen said the plan will allow member states to spend money collectively towards the individual defence of their nations.<\/p>\n
The spending may be used for all types of domains, the European Commission President said, including air and missile defence, artillery systems, drones and anti-drone systems.<\/p>\n
\u2018Cohesion funds\u2019 \u2013 money which is used to finance inter-EU projects \u2013 may also be used to assist in the development of poorer European countries\u2019 defence systems.\u00a0A portion of the EU\u2019s budget will also be diverted to joint investments into the defence sector as well.<\/p>\n
The last two areas of the plan would involve the bloc\u2019s lending arm the European Investment Bank \u2013 which EU states want to drop limits on lending to defence firms \u2013 and a savings and investments union to help companies access capital.<\/p>\n
In total, the Commission President said the new plan could see \u201cclose to \u20ac800bn\u201d being spent across the bloc.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cA new era is upon us,\u201d von der Leyen said in a letter this morning. \u201cEurope faces a clear and present danger on a scale that none of us has seen in our adult lifetime.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u2018Cynical\u2019 decision<\/h3>\n
Politicians in Ireland have said today\u2019s announcement from the European Commission was \u201ccynically\u201d using the war in Ukraine as a reason to change the rules around spending.<\/p>\n
Sinn F\u00e9in TD Pearse Doherty said in the D\u00e1il that spending rules have been \u201ccompletely thrown out the window\u201d in the announcement, and argued that it would\u2019ve been more beneficial for the EU to allocate changes for issues such as housing and healthcare.<\/p>\n
This opinion was shared by People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy: \u201cUnfortunately, there hasn\u2019t been a de-armament [in the EU] that they (European Commission) are reversing.<\/p>\n
\u201cMilitary spending has already been on a significant upward trend over the last number of years, and they\u2019re talking about accelerating that even further.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the EU\u2019s remit not including issues such as housing, healthcare or social protection, Murphy argued that spending rules could have been eased in relation to these issues, so member states have better access to funds.<\/p>\n
Labour leader Ivana Bacik said von der Leyen\u2019s claims that the EU needs to build up defences were correct, and pointed to concerns within the Baltic states over threats on their borders that \u201cvery clearly\u201d highlight the need for a stronger focus on defence.<\/p>\n
Bacik said, however, that the announcement has\u00a0also reiterates the need for Ireland\u2019s military neutrality to be constitutionally underpinned.\u00a0<\/p>\n
With reporting from AFP and Muiris \u00d3 Cearbhaill<\/em><\/p>\nWant to know more about what\u2019s happening in Ukraine and why? Check out our FactCheck Knowledge Bank for essential reads and guides to finding good information online.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n
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Rubi Paris Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen Alamy Stock Photo dangerous times Von der Leyen also said that more of the EU budget would be diverted into investments in the defence sector. LAST UPDATE | 4 Mar IRELAND WILL BE incentivised to \u201cmassively boost\u201d spending on military capability and defence systems, as the EU enters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":836290,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[142726,1166],"tags":[11476],"class_list":{"0":"post-836289","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-incentivised","8":"category-ireland","9":"tag-bitcoins"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=836289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/836290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=836289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=836289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=836289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}