Under the current proposal, the €150 billion loan fund can be used only for procurement within Europe.
The draft proposal released yesterday shows that the French have prevailed. The headlines in Europe proclaimed that the decision excludes the US, UK and Turkish arms industries from European procurement in the billions of euros, but Israel too will be outside the fence.
According to the proposal, 65% of the cost of procurement of defense systems must be spent in countries in EFTA (the European Free Trade Association), which consists of the EU countries plus Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, and Lichtenstein, and also Ukraine.
The remaining 35% can be spent in other countries, but only if they have signed a security and defense partnership agreement with the EU. South Korea, Japan, and the UK are expected to sign such agreements, but the US is not, because of the fear that they will not allow countries to bar the sale of certain weapons systems.
Israel and its defense companies are liable to find themselves torn between the EU requirements and the security alliance with the US, which will prevent the signing of such a strategic agreement and deny them billions of euros in potential sales. The EU plan also excludes the possibility of European countries buying weapons systems entirely designed in a country that is not in EFTA or has not signed an agreement.
Currently it is still in the planning phase. The source of the article I posted is an Israeli newspaper.
Would you mind adding the subtitle of the article to make that clearer even for those who don’t click through: “Under the current proposal, the €150 billion loan fund can be used only for procurement within Europe.”
(Also, tbh, the authors writing an article about Israel being excluded is kind of a misleading, as Israel is not special here. Ivory Coast and Paraguay are also excluded, seeing as they’re not EU members.)
Added. The article also contained ‘draft proposal’ so it is not final.
It is significant because Turkey was mentioned but not Israel and they kind of belong to the same group.
Ivory and Paraguay are not big arms dealers. Israel however sells a massive amount of weapons to the EU
Thanks - however! I actually thought you could just update the title to this: “EU defense budget plan excludes Israel’s arms industry | Under the current proposal, the €150 billion loan fund can be used only for procurement within Europe.”
(Of course, ideally people should read the article before commenting. But we all know that’s not necessarily the case.)
Oh, shoot, sorry. Missed that, thanks for the correction.