European Union leaders will support a change in the European Investment Bank's lending policy to allow the huge European state-owned lender to finance defense projects, Reuters reports, citing draft conclusions of next week's EU leaders' summit, UNN reports.
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Last week, the European Commission called on the EIB to change its lending policy, which currently explicitly excludes lending to purely military projects, to help Europe boost defense production in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
But, as indicated, some EU governments, especially neutral ones, are resisting this, fearing that defense funding could damage the EIB's top credit rating and not solve the problem, which they say is not a lack of funding but a lack of long-term contracts.
"Increasing defense readiness will contribute to strengthening the sovereignty of the Union and will require additional efforts to... improve the access of the European defense industry to public and private financing, including through the European Investment Bank, inter alia, by reviewing the definition of dual-use goods and the policy of lending to the defense industry," the draft conclusions say.
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