GENEVA, December 17. /TASS/. The European countries are eager to increase defense spending amid the alleged security threat attributed to Russia, but they still have no idea where to look for the significant sums of money they will need for this, the Swiss daily Neue Zuercher Zeitung has said.

According to its estimates, there are fierce debates in the EU about how to raise more money for defense.

As the newspaper notes, huge sums - 100 billion euros instead of the current 10 billion - are on the agenda.

The daily believes that the money can be raised by redistributing the existing state budget: cutting social spending, borrowing more in violation of the current fiscal rules, or misusing the existing funds. In reality, however, all of these "options have certain pitfalls." They are "either difficult to implement politically or violate the principles that were established not without a good reason".

According to NZZ, how difficult it is to restructure government budgets can well be seen in Belgium, where Bart De Wever, the leader of the election-winning moderate right-wing New Flemish Alliance (NFA) party, has been unable to form a new government for months due to budget disputes. The daily recalls that the governments of two major European economies - Germany and France - have collapsed due to financial issues over the past month. The EU countries have reached the gross debt limit in accordance with the Maastricht criteria. What makes the problem still worse is the European countries in their defense procurement policies give preference to domestic manufacturers even though the costs are higher due to small production volumes, the newspaper adds.

Finally, as NZZ points out, proposals for creating a new fund with joint debt obligations assumed by all members of the bloc, which was first done during the coronavirus pandemic, have been rejected by a number of community members, including Germany and the Netherlands. It is already clear that the bloc will have problems with paying debts made to set up the EU pandemic recovery fund. It is noted that these debts will be paid by the countries of the bloc for 30 years starting from 2028.

On October 3, Andrius Kubilius, who later became European Commissioner for Defense and Space, told Bloomberg that the EU should increase military capabilities in case of confrontation with Russia, which he considers possible in six to eight years. Kubilius told the European periodical Politico on December 9 that he was asking the EU countries to reserve 100 billion euros in the community's next seven-year budget to prepare for a possible Russian aggression. This is ten times the amount allocated for defense in the current seven-year EU budget.