Piani di galleggianti del Regno Unito per il fondo europeo congiunto per armi “stockpile”

The UK has circulated plans for European countries to establish a “supranational institution” that jointly purchases military equipment, stockpiles weapons and helps to finance large-scale rearmament across the continent. The informal paper, written by UK officials and seen by the Financial Times, presents the case for a multilateral fund for a “coalition of the willing” that would borrow on markets at favourable rates and support defence spending. Backed with equity and sovereign guarantees, the fund would both lend money for defence projects and actually acquire military assets, creating common “stockpiles” of equipment for participating nations. Drawn up by UK Treasury officials, the so-called “non-paper” was circulated last week with key European capitals for discussion but stated that it does not represent the official policy of the British government. “We don’t comment on leaks,” said a UK government spokesperson. While not specifying the intended size of the fund, the paper says the measures could help to close a defence financing gap in Europe that is estimated to be “hundreds of billions of euros”.

Britain’s chancellor Rachel Reeves and her Norwegian counterpart Jens Stoltenberg have been invited to join a meeting of EU finance ministers in Warsaw next week, which will focus on defence financing. Reeves talked about defence financing options with counterparts during meetings of the G20 finance ministers in Cape Town in February. Uncertainty over US security commitments and intense pressure from President Donald Trump’s administration has prompted European capitals to pledge big increases in defence spending. But many are grappling with high deficits and have little room to borrow.

A key goal of the new instrument would be to “acquire assets on behalf of subscribed nations” in a financing structure that would spare overstretched national budgets from being hit with upfront investment costs. “A number of models of supranational institution may support increasing fiscal capacity for defence spending,” the paper stated. While the proposed fund could help drive common procurement and provide finance for smaller defence companies, its main advantage would be to bankroll the stockpiling of weapons and ammunition that governments would only pay for when they draw them down. Potential purchases noted in the paper include spares for military equipment such as tanks and aircraft, artillery shells, air defence munitions, explosives and logistics aircraft such as helicopters and carriers.

The UK needs to stop sitting on both EU and US chairs

>The informal paper, written by UK officials and seen by the Financial Times, presents the case for a multilateral fund for a “coalition of the willing” that would borrow on markets at favourable rates and support defence spending.

>Backed with equity and sovereign guarantees, the fund would both lend money for defence projects and actually acquire military assets, creating common “stockpiles” of equipment for participating nations.

Translated: the UK which is borrowing on markets at close to 5% (worse than Italy and Greece) and has a debt to GDP ratio close to 100% wants to leech like a parasite on the solid balance sheets of fiscally prudent countries.

Pretty sure the EU will tell them to fuck off. Especially because they already have their own EU 150bn fund that works the same by using the EU budget as a collateral

Sounds good.

It’s time to come together on defence

While great to include Norway in this, we also need to consider other European non-EU countries.

Montenegro, Albania, North Macedonia. Throw Moldova in the mix as well.

Sure these countries are not massive, they are still important. All 4 have fought in conflict since the 90s, all 4 have shown support for Ukraine in some capacity. I don’t expect any of them are privvy to the recent EU spending splurge given they’re only accession countries.