France, which has traditionally advocated for including Buy European clauses in the bloc’s defense initiatives, has been vocal on the issue recently, seeing the new plan as a way to ramp up EU countries’ national production.
French Finance Minister Eric Lombard, before entering a meeting of finance ministers on Monday, said that it’s “very important that the funds are used to buy European products.”
Other countries also see the risk of relying on U.S. military production.
“There’s a question of security and not being dependent on other continents,” Swedish Finance Minister Elisabeth Svantesson said on Tuesday.
Proposing to use EU loans to buy European products is also a way to win resistance of those worrying that other economic and social issues will come after military priorities. “This will also have positive spillovers for our economy and our competitiveness. It will include new factories and production lines” here in Europe, von der Leyen said.
