BRUSSELS, June 27. /TASS/. An EU summit has ordered the European Commission (EC) to develop a roadmap to fund militarization of the Union by the next summit in October to create conditions for the implementation of the NATO decision to boost military spending by 2.5 times, head of the European Council Antonio Costa said.
"Today we have asked the president of the Commission to propose a roadmap, including on financing, for our meeting in October," he said. "Yesterday at NATO 23 European Union member states decided to spend more. Today we worked on how to spend better."
The head of the EC promised to simplify the state aid rules, ease bureaucratic restrictions and environmental regulations for military investment.
According to her, 16 of the 27 EU countries have already requested from the European Commission the opportunity to increase their budget deficits by 1.5% in the coming years to attract additional loans for military needs. The head of the European Commission called on the rest of the EU states to take advantage of this opportunity to increase their military spending.
Von der Leyen stated the need for the countries of the union to implement common defense projects, such as the EU Missile Defense Shield or the EU military cloud service. In her opinion, these initiatives should be implemented with the 150 billion euros allocated by the European Commission from the EU budget. This effectively means that the EC will gain full control over the key military projects of the member states.