The Simple Start to Ending the EU Security Nightmare: Bonds
Jointly issued defense debt is low-hanging fruit for even ardent skeptics.
JD Vance participates in a bilateral meeting with German exterior minister Annalena Baerbock and German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier last week.
Photographer: Johannes Simon/Getty Images EuropeUS Vice President JD Vance's abrupt address to the Munich Security Conference on Friday certainly rattled European cages. The European Union needs to come together, fast, for its own self-preservation. That will cost a lot of money, and happily there is an existing template from the pandemic: The NextGenerationEU €800 billion ($840 billion) bond-issuance platform. There's already been a lot of discussion about extending this somehow, both for defense or climate change.
Nothing in the EU is ever straightforward - but a solution is at hand if the existential urgency is there. Constitutional issues often get in the way, but if Germany could swallow the pandemic rescue plan surely other countries can get out of their own way now too. The EU’s saving grace has always been legal and budgetary flexibility when required. And there are some promising signs, with the likely next German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, expressing broad support for common defense bonds. It was a major topic at Monday's emergency defense summit in Paris that all the major European leaders attended, including some, like UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who didn't make it to Munich.