LONDON, February 2. /TASS/. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said his country would like to resume previously negotiations on Britain's access to the EU's Security Action for Europe (SAFE) defense fund.

"We’ve got to step up and do more. It’s not only President Trump who thinks Europe needs to do more but other presidents as well. I think the same. That’s why we’ve made commitments to greater spending. I think we need to go beyond that," the Guardian quoted him as saying.

"I have made the argument that that should require us to look at schemes like SAFE and others to see whether there is a way in which we can work more closely together," Starmer told reporters.

In November 2025, Bloomberg reported, citing sources, that negotiations on Britain’s accession to the SAFE fund had failed. According to the source, the parties still disagreed on the UK's financial contribution to the initiative.

Earlier, the Financial Times reported that the EU had more than tripled the fee it proposed the UK pay for access to the EU's defense fund. Brussels had hoped that the UK would agree to pay 2 billion euros for access to the approximately 140 billion euros SAFE fund. Initially, London was asked to pay 6.7 billion euros. However, as the publication pointed out, this is still tens of times more than the 75 million euros that London, according to media reports, is willing to pay for access to the defense fund.

UK Defense Secretary John Healey said on November 19 last year that Britain would like to become part of the EU's defense fund, but "not at any cost."