French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou said Thursday he wants defence spending excluded from EU spending rules, in an interview with the daily Figaro.
European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said earlier this month that the EU would suspend public spending rules to ramp up defence investments as the US commitment to European security has come under question.
EU members are bound by spending rules obliging them to keep the public deficit below three percent of economic output and debt at 60 percent of GDP.
But the EU can suspend the rules in exceptional circumstances and crises, as it did during the coronavirus pandemic when states had to prop up their embattled economies.
Bayrou told the Figaro: “I share the opinion of those who say that ‘in these dangerous circumstances military spending should be excluded from European deficit rules.”
“Our country has made efforts that others haven’t in building our defence industry,” said Bayrou. “That’s a significant asset.”
Von der Leyen said earlier this month at the annual Munich Security Conference that she believes Europe was in a period of crisis that justifies suspending the deficit rule for defence spending.
Since returning to the White House in January US President Donald Trump has called on NATO members to more than double their defence spending and aligned the United States with Russian rhetoric on the war in Ukraine.
French President Emmanuel Macron earlier this month slammed the EU’s fiscal rules as “obsolete” in an interview with the Financial Times.
Since the summer, France has been part of a group of eight countries facing the EU’s excessive deficit procedure, with Belgium, Hungary, Italy, Malta, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.
France’s 2024 public deficit is expected to come in around six percent of GDP and Bayrou’s government aims to bring it down to 5.4 percent in 2025.