00:00The EU is not yet ready to issue so-called Eurobonds to boost much-needed defence capabilities.
00:08In an exclusive interview with Euronews, the EU's defence commissioner said he expected
00:13member states to make use of the five proposed options under the Rearming Europe plan before
00:18considering further steps.
00:20Eurobonds, you know, it means that the European Union will have the bigger debts which will
00:27need to be serviced again by all the member states and now we have exactly in some ways
00:34a challenge what to do with the Eurobonds which were issued during pandemic, how to
00:41repay.
00:42The EU's debt payments from the grants issued in response to the COVID-19 pandemic are expected
00:48to run between 25 and 30 billion annually, which the bloc has not yet decided how to
00:53repay.
00:54For the next four years, in some kind of idealistic scenario, if all the member states will start
01:01to spend 3.5%, during the next four years it will be 2.4 trillion euros spent on defence.
01:08So it's quite a big amount of money.
01:11The question is, will it cover all the needs or we shall need to have additional funding?
01:18To achieve this, the EU is trying to give its member states more fiscal leeway to increase
01:23defence spending.
01:24But first, they have to agree on what they mean by defence spending.
01:30Countries such as Spain and Italy argue that the definition should be broadened to include
01:34spending on counter-terrorism, climate change and other security investments.
01:39Kubelius disagrees.
01:41We need to fight against climate change.
01:43We need to fight for social things which are also very important.
01:51But let's do it job by job.
01:55Defence is defence.
01:56The EU has quadrupled production since the start of Russian military aggression in Ukraine,
02:02but more efforts will be needed to catch up with Russian production.
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