EU countries greenlight plan to boost bloc's defence: spokeswoman

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00:00Let's get back to Europe. Arman Georgian is France 24's Europe editor standing by for us live in Brussels.

00:06Arman, good evening to you. News coming in, EU countries green light a plan to boost the bloc's defence.

00:13This has been quoted or attached to a spokeswoman.

00:17They've been precise on that, calling it a spokeswoman. Arman, what can you tell us?

00:24Yeah, I can confirm that, Mark, because they finished the discussions on European defence.

00:29They have approved those conclusions and this is about Ursula von der Leyen,

00:34the president of the European Commission, her 800 billion euro plan to boost European defence.

00:41There are several aspects to that, but I'll just limit myself to two of, I think, the main points.

00:47One is relaxing budget deficit rules.

00:50So basically EU member states will be able to break their current deficit ceilings

00:56if they want to make a big investment in defence.

01:00And the other aspect is loans worth 150 billion euros to, again, pour into defence projects.

01:09So that has indeed been confirmed, Mark.

01:15So one of the issues, of course, going into this was those voices of dissent within the EU

01:21who don't really want to support Ukraine and the chief among them, Viktor Orban of Hungary.

01:25Now, Orban dined with Macron at the Elysee last night.

01:29Do we take it from what has happened now that that dinner went very well?

01:36Well, Orban has said after that dinner that although they obviously disagree on a lot of things,

01:43they do agree on boosting Europe's defence broadly, although, of course, the devil is always in the details.

01:50So I think based on Orban's comments from last night,

01:54it wasn't really surprising that he was on board for the summit conclusions when it comes to European defence.

02:00Where things get a lot more tricky, Mark, and this is why we might be facing a pretty long night,

02:05is that the Ukraine chapter has not been agreed,

02:09and that is going to be the subject of negotiations over the next few hours.

02:14And basically, I heard from a spokeswoman a little while ago

02:19that either the EU27 can have an ambitious programme

02:25or they can have everybody on board to sign a common statement.

02:30So that was a diplomatic way of saying if they want this sort of high level of ambition,

02:35then they can't really expect to get Hungary on board to sign the final statement.

02:39So this presents the EU with a dilemma.

02:42Does it appear disunited with an ambitious language on Ukraine

02:48that is basically signed by 26 member states and they leave Hungary out?

02:52Or do they go for something that sounds less ambitious, but they have Hungary signing on?

02:58So I think you've got two schools of thought going on right now here in Brussels

03:01as to which one of those two scenarios is the better one.

03:06We'll have to see in the next few hours which of those emerge.

03:09Armen Djordjian, thank you, as always, very much indeed,

03:12Armen Djordjian, our Europe editor there in Brussels.

03:15Let's bring you the latest on the ground.

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