Tajani: “We have decided to use the Safe fund.” He then adds: “We will decide by the end of the year”

“We have decided to utilise Safe by requesting funding of 14.9 billion by the end of the year; we will draw up our proposal, and then Mr Crosetto will outline how to invest these funds in the following year.” This was stated by Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani during his address to the Foreign Affairs and Defence Committees of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, alongside Defence Minister Guido Crosetto, as part of the briefing on the outcomes of the NATO summit in Ankara. The SAFE programme is an EU instrument that provides loans of up to 150 billion euros to help member states rapidly and significantly increase investment in the defence sector through joint procurement.

“As it has been set up, it is a tool for financing military expenditure. It is not in addition to that provided for in the budget,” explained Crosetto during the briefing. “So in Italy, SAFE is an alternative. I hear everyone talking about SAFE as if it were a panacea for all ills. It is an entirely technical decision that we will make by the end of the year: of the 14.9 billion mentioned earlier by Minister Tajani, we will assess how much to use it for technical purposes as an alternative to BoTs and CCTs, from the point of view of financial viability. The amount could be five, six, seven or eight billion euros, based on the programmes already planned by the Ministry of Defence,” he added. This point was subsequently reiterated by Tajani, who, outside the Senate, clarified what he had said earlier during the hearing: “We have earmarked 14.9 billion for the SAFE; the government will decide by the end of the year how much to use.” Contrary to what was stated during the hearing, the decision to use the full 14.9 billion has not yet been taken, but the government’s intention is to submit the request by the end of 2026.

“At present, the Safe is a purely technical decision regarding the financing of current defence expenditure,” Crosetto reiterated, explaining that European funds would be used to finance expenditure items that have already been committed. “Therefore, it is not a political decision that strengthens or weakens Europe; it is a decision that has been viewed from a technical perspective. The political decision,” he continued, “will be the budget deviation we will vote on – if we vote in September – regarding 0.9 per cent for defence and 0.6 per cent for energy, because this year the infringement procedure allows us to invest more only if we adopt the deviation, and we will see the effects of that in 2027–28. Those will be political decisions concerning both energy and defence.”