EU summit: agreement on rearmament
President Macron offers nuclear weapons for European shield. Chancellor Scholz is sceptical but his expected successor Merz is ready to talk.
Brussels (dpa/d.de) - In response to the US foreign policy shift under President Donald Trump, the EU is planning to rearm on a massive scale. At an EU summit, all 27 member states backed the EU Commission’s proposal in principle, which would see up to 150 billion euros in EU loans being made available for defence investment and exceptions to the EU debt rules being made for defence.
French President Emmanuel Macron gave summit participants plenty to talk about when he reiterated his push for a European defence shield based on French nuclear weapons.
Germany’s outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) wants to stick with the existing NATO deterrent system based on US nuclear weapons. “Nobody is planning to depart from the current situation, where we have an agreement in NATO. And that is also the position shared by all the relevant parties in Germany,” he said.
When making his announcement, Macron also referred to statements made by Germany’s likely future chancellor, Friedrich Merz (CDU). Shortly before the Bundestag election, Merz had said in an interview that one needed to talk with Europe’s nuclear powers, the United Kingdom and France, about nuclear participation or at least nuclear safety.