💢 EU split deepens over budget shift toward defense

Seventeen EU countries have pushed back against plans to redirect more of the bloc’s next seven-year budget toward defense, exposing a widening split over how far Brussels should reshape spending around militarization.

In a joint letter published by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and sent to the Irish EU presidency, the governments demanded that nearly €900 billion in agriculture and cohesion funding remain protected. Ireland currently chairs the Council of the EU and is mediating negotiations over the 2028–2034 budget.

✍️ The signatories include Italy, Poland, Spain, Hungary, Romania, Greece, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Portugal, Malta, and Cyprus.

The European Commission’s proposed budget is worth almost €2 trillion. It includes a major increase in defense-related spending, including €131 billion for the defense and space window of the new European Competitiveness Fund — around five times the comparable EU-level funding in the current budget.

A European newspaper reported that the 17-country bloc is pushing back against a separate camp seeking deeper cuts to traditional EU spending, turning the next budget into a broader fight over whether more money should be shifted from regional and social priorities toward defense.

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