European Union restrictions impeding investments in defence capabilities
The current war in Ukraine has shown that defence capabilities are not of the past, but of paramount importance for the security of the European Union and our Member States. Germany invests an additional 100 billion euro in their defence and other Member States of the European Union are also increasing their budget to the 2% GDP norm. However, the implementation of increased defence investments and execution of work by industry is strongly hampered by two restrictions imposed by the European Union. The first rule is the exclusion of investments in Military equipment by the European Investment Bank (EIB) and affiliates. This broad exclusion strongly encourages civilian banks and other financial institutions to apply a similar policy. It would be much more effective and allow the current urgent intentions of member states to be executed, when this exclusion would be limited to “controversial weapons”, like cluster munitions and chemical weapons, as laid down in several multinati