[Trending News] The BEI will expand the granting of credits to finance the European defense industry

The European Investment Bank (BEI) is willing to tighten the accelerator to finance the growing defense expense. Most of his shareholders, the Member States themselves, claimed him just a few weeks ago and the president of the entity, Nadia Calviño, has attended the petition. The Spanish former president has sent a letter to the leaders of the European Union, to which the country has had access, explaining their plans to expand the granting of loans to the European war industry just two days before the summit in which they will face how to face “this was to rearm”, as defined by the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. Now the Bei Council will have to ratify Calviño's proposal.

The largest multilateral financial entity in the world has an important role in this new time in which geopolitics, defense and security have become the compass that guides a good part of political decisions. Von der Leyen herself has explicitly mentioned it in her first -hour speech on Tuesday to quantify the volume of public spending of the rearme plan. Although the contribution of the BEI did not appear in its calculation of 800,000 million, it has cited it as a lever to mobilize private capital and business investments in this field.

“We intend to propose in the following Board of Directors of the Bei [que se celebra el 21 de marzo] An adjustment in eligibility criteria [para dar créditos] of the group, to ensure that the excluded activities are accurately defined and have as limited possible reach, in order to adjust to the new political priorities of the EU, so that the operations of the group and their financial position safeguard, ”writes Calviño in the letter dated Tuesday, March 4. That is, for now it is a proposal that the directors and counselors themselves have to approve, who are the representatives of the States themselves.

It was precisely the leaders of 18 Member States who claimed this step to the BEI a few weeks ago, just before the previous European Council. The answer comes, again, on the eve of a new monothematic meeting on European defense and its financing this Thursday in Brussels. Therefore, in the letter itself, Calviño recalls that in 2024, the first year in which she has been president, credits to the defense sector have doubled, up to 1,000 million euros.

By 2025, the intention of the financial group would be to continue with the tendency to double investment in the sector in 12 months. But there is an element that may indicate even more ambition. The BEI has a credit line of up to 8,000 million for defense projects. His intention is to suppress that limit.

If the Council of Directors finally confirms the president's proposal on March 21, it will be the second change in the criteria that the BEI follows when granting loans to the security and defense industry. Already in May of last year, there was a substantial change that opened the hand a lot. If until then there was a strong component of civil use in the investment, although it also had a military component, a small civil development aspect of the project so that it can have financing is now enough.

Calviño's plans are to give a more twist to this point. It is intended not only to finance the manufacturing capabilities of the defense industry. Also promote the R&D of the sector and the fight against hybrid threats, through the use of artificial intelligence, or the development of infrastructure that serve for military or civil purposes. What the BEI is not going to do is give credits to the states to finance the purchase of armament or war material of another.