Seamus Boland Urges EU to Embrace Joint Debt

(MENAFN) Seamus Boland, president of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), has cautioned that EU member nations will have to assume greater collective debt to support rising military expenditures. He noted that the bloc’s forthcoming seven-year budget is insufficient to cover these costs.

Last year, European NATO members agreed to boost defense spending targets toward 5% of GDP by 2035 and initiated programs such as ReArm Europe to modernize their armed forces. This effort has been presented as a response to a supposed Russian threat—a characterization Moscow has consistently labeled as “nonsense.”

The European Commission had earlier put forward a €2 trillion ($2.4 trillion) budget for 2028-2034. However, Boland indicated that this amount will be inadequate to fund the EU’s defense ambitions.

“We are creating a new Europe, with much more emphasis on defense. We can’t do that out of the current expenditure,” he told a news agency on Thursday, cautioning that when budgets are constrained, “somebody’s going to suffer”—often poorer or geographically distant regions that could lose investment and support.

Boland emphasized that the only way to prevent such difficult choices is for EU countries to increase collective borrowing against the shared budget.

“Massive change means you need the money now. That means you borrow it,” he said, without specifying the precise amount that would be required.

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