‘Watershed moment’: EU leaders agree plan for huge rise in defence spending
‘Watershed moment’: EU leaders agree plan for huge rise in defence spending
Leaders endorse von der Leyen proposal but show of unity over Ukraine is marred by Hungary’s Viktor Orbán
European leaders holding emergency talks in Brussels have agreed on a massive increase to defence spending, amid a drive to shore up support for Ukraine after Donald Trump halted US military aid and intelligence sharing.
But the show of unity was marred by Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, failing to endorse an EU statement on Ukraine pushing back against Trump’s Russia-friendly negotiating stance.
The 26 other EU leaders, including Orbán’s ally Robert Fico, the Slovakian prime minister, “firmly supported” the statement. “There can be no negotiations on Ukraine without Ukraine,” said the draft statement, a response to Trump’s attempt to sideline Europe and Kyiv.
Can we just kick out Hungary already?
Hungarians; nothing against your hut until you got your shit together and rid yourself of the dictator wannabe, we can't have Hungary be the the saboteur of every good thing the EU is trying to do
The decision to kick a country out of the EU needs to be unanimous with the current treaty. In the past it's not been an option since there's at least two rogue states that will block such moves since that will make each of them safe.
Currently the EU is withholding EU funding to get concessions out of Orban which kinda works. Only a treaty change will fix this when they turn the unanimous voting into a qualified majority voting.
It's essentially like trying to change the constitution of a county except currently it's unanimous voting of the council of countries. Switching to a 75% of countries + 2/3 of parliament would is what the EU is gravitating towards but that will involve more concessions with Hungary.
And just like that America lost that much foreign power.
Good work EU.
You could always invest in the European defense industry, rather than US stocks https://i.imgur.com/cUpqyJo.png . In any case I'm not looking forward to the US becoming Russia 2.0.
But they finally got what they've wanted - NATO spending their agreed amount. Let's see how it goes 🤷♂️
Maybe the US's collapse will be good thing long-term. Sucks that so many people have to suffer before that, though.
About fucking time
Trump is an asshole, and the US should absolutely be the leader in defending Ukraine given its stockpiles and technologies and the immediacy of the need.
At the same time, Europe was able to fund some pretty nice social programs by minimizing defense spending over the last few decades. They could only do that with aggressors on their borders by relying far too heavily on the US.
They could only do that with aggressors on their borders by relying far too heavily on the US.
Not true. They can always take money from their ruling class and give it to their working class.
That statement applies to minimizing defense spending. Of course you can raise revenues and spend more. If you spend less in other areas, you don't need to.
The US government spends more per total capita on healthcare than any country with nationalized healthcare, but in the US it covers less than a third of the population.
The US spends more on defense than anyone but it keeps fucking things up all around the world to justify those spendings.
The US can afford social programs, it decides not to, so give us all a fucking break.
I have only one correction and it’s a small one. The US spends more on healthcare but that spending isn’t all by the US government. Your main point still stands. The system sucks.
More on this:
In 2022, the United States spent an estimated $12,742 per person on healthcare — the highest healthcare costs per capita across similar countries.
Healthcare spending is driven by utilization (the number of services used) and price (the amount charged per service). An increase in either of those factors can result in higher healthcare costs. Despite spending nearly twice as much on healthcare per capita, utilization rates in the United States do not differ significantly from other wealthy OECD countries. Prices, therefore, appear to be the main driver of the cost difference between the United States and other wealthy countries.
There are many possible factors for why healthcare prices in the United States are higher than other countries, ranging from the consolidation of hospitals — leading to a lack of competition — to the inefficiencies and administrative waste that derive from the complexity of the U.S. healthcare system. In fact, the United States spends over $1,000 per person on administrative costs — almost five times more than the average of other wealthy countries and more than it spends on long-term healthcare.
The eu sent $5b more in arms to Ukraine than the us did.
They need to increase that but also keep more for themselves.
I keep hearing this but I'm a skeptic at heart. You wouldn't happen to have some sources would you?
They could also afford to make the disgustingly rich even richer. By a lot.
Well put
UvdL is same as Orban, just much smarter and more evil. In general, requirement for unilateral decisions makes it the obvious suspicion that when Hungary vetoes something, in a different decision-making process it would be half of the member states, not just Hungary.
Anyway, this is not even about decisions, just "shows of unity".
I think European defense companies are going to make a lot of money, though. Rearmament is a word that even aesthetically invokes images from German 30s, or Soviet 30s, with those production lines making tanks and field artillery pieces faster than they make cars today. Of course, IRL the game mechanics have changed and they are going to produce different things mostly.
UvdL is not the same as Orban. She is at the very least pro EU when Orban is very much against everything. Orban might end up making the EU multi-tiered system where some countries will federalise more than others.
Shore up aid how? With UK’s nonexistent SPGs (they sent basically their entire SPG fleet into Ukraine) and Poland’s SPG fleet that has already been gutted in half from SPG deliveries to Ukraine? Or Germany’s 1 trillion euro aid package proposal to Ukraine which nearly won the horrendous AFD party the election?
I presume by... making things? with the 800 billion euros?
Outrageous. Pish-tosh! Argylbargle!
No way dude! But with what industry though?
In all seriousness, Russia was producing 20-30 T-90Ms per month (or 240-360 per year) in 2024 going off of monthly deliveries. The entirety of Europe cannot even match this. The only country I am aware of that can produce this many tanks per month is South Korea and China. This has likely increased since then but due to increased OPSEC, there have been no videos of batches of T-90Ms (or even T-72B3s) being delivered. But missile production has doubled since 2024 so I would not be surprised that tank production has also doubled to 40-60 per month (480-720 per year).
I have been keeping track of T-90M deliveries for a while now:
It was always around 20-30 per month last year. This means Russia produces more tanks than the amount the entire German military has in a single year. And as I stated, this likely has doubled but it is impossible to verify as OPSEC means we have not seen any deliveries on video for half a year now. Europe can't even produce their own ballistic missiles which have been a game changer in Ukraine as shown by the effectiveness of ATACMS and Iskander-M.
Russia is producing more shells than the entirety of Europe combined who struggles to supply Ukraine with even a million shells (while Russia was producing 3 million per year in 2024).
Well they better figure it out real quick, now that they finally woke up. Better late than never.
