EU’s Von Der Leyen Proposes $840 Billion European ‘Rearmament’ Plan as Zelensky Caves on Ceasefire Talks
EU chief Von der Leyen: “We are in an era of rearmament. And Europe is ready to massively boost its defence spending.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed an $840 ‘rearmament’ plan for Europe, while President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday made a U-turn, agreeing to a negotiated end to the war in Ukraine.
“We are in an era of rearmament,” Von der Leyen declared, “And Europe is ready to massively boost its defence spending.”
Von der Leyen’s “ReArm Europe” plan will require massive borrowings, as the EU’s two biggest economies, France and Germany, have been shrinking due to negative growth numbers.
“The European Commission proposed on Tuesday to borrow up to 150 billion euros ($157.76 billion) to lend to EU governments under a rearmament plan driven by Russia’s war in Ukraine and fears that Europe can no longer be sure of U.S. protection,” Reuters reported. “The announcement came the day after U.S. President Donald Trump paused military aid to Ukraine, highlighting a growing divergence between European leaders and Washington over the continent’s security and how to handle Russia.”
The multi-billion plan seeks to overhaul the military capabilities of the EU’s 27 member states, investing in the bloc’s abilities to field larger armies and boost defense manufacturing. “The five measures she outlined, which she details in a letter to EU leaders ahead of an extraordinary summit on Thursday, include a “new instrument” to provide €150 billion in loans to member states to finance joint defence investments in pan-European capabilities including air and missile defence, artillery systems, missiles and ammunition, drones and anti-drone systems,” France’s Euronews TV channel reported.
We are living in dangerous times.
Europe‘s security is threatened in a very real way.
Today I present ReArm Europe.
A plan for a safer and more resilient Europe ↓ https://t.co/CYTytB5ZMk
— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) March 4, 2025
Germany’s state-run DW TV reported the details of the proposed EU plan:
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday presented a plan to bolster Europe’s defense industry and increase military capabilities.
“We are in an era of rearmament, and Europe is ready to massively boost its defense spending,” Von der Leyen said.
She said the plan, dubbed “ReArm Europe,” could mobilize around €800 billion ($841.5 billion).
The announcement comes after Washington suspended all military aid to Ukraine, days after US President Donald Trump clashed with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the Oval Office.
Von der Leyen had suggested the rearmament plan after emerging from the closed-door meeting on Ukraine at Lancaster House in London over the weekend.
Von der Leyen outlined the five-point plan at a critical time for the future of Europe’s security.
One of them is a proposal to suspend strict budget rules to allow member states to ramp up “their defence expenditures without triggering the excessive deficit procedure,” Von der Leyen said.
She referred to a mechanism designed to ensure public finance stability as it forces governments to lower deficit levels if the 3% GDP threshold is breached.
After decades of reneging on promises to meet NATO spending targets and making U.S taxpayers foot the bill for the continent’s defense, European powers appear to have suddenly found the political will and necessary funds for a massive rearmament plan.
The EU proposal came as President Trump announced the suspension of all military aid to Ukraine on Monday night.
President Zelensky on Saturday declared that the end of the war between Ukraine and Russia was “still very, very far away,” a statement seen as a rebuff to Washington’s diplomatic efforts to secure a ceasefire between the two countries. President Trump reacted sharply to the statement. “America will not put up with it for much longer,” he said on X.
Following Trump’s decision to pause all military aid to Kyiv, Zelensky appears to have had a ‘change of heart.’ On Tuesday, Zelensky announced on X that he would return to the negotiating table.
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Comments
I’m beginning to think that the first nuke lobbed at Israel will come from London. I can’t believe how overrun with Muslims it has become.
Even money is on France being the first.
Or France. There are little towns in Provence where it’s more likely to hear Arabic spoken in the markets than it is French. Burqas are everywhere in some towns. It’s remarkably worse than it was just a decade ago. I think that’s one of the major differences between England & France. While there are a lot of Muslims in Paris, there are also growing Muslim populations out on the countryside, particularly Southern France. In the UK, the smaller towns are less….diverse…for now.
Macron likes him because he’s one of the few political leaders who is actually shorter than the little Frenchman.
There is a big problem with Muslims acquiring nukes by overrunning Europe, mostly France. I hope there is a plan in place to make sure that doesn’t happen.
My personal prediction (so take that for what little it’s worth) is that Europe is going to degenerate into civil war. Muslims won’t take over the government any time soon, but they will be an ever-growing, powerful, and violent minority. As the resentful population grows ever angrier you’ll start to see outbreaks of violence, and the whole damned thing will start falling apart. European nations will settle back into the fascism they’re so comfortable with.
Muslims have a big problem: they suck at war. Europeans are very, very good at it. They invented industrial mass slaughter. Methinks Europe is in for some ugly times.
With soporific speeches such as this, the only outcome possible is … nothing changes.
All of a sudden Europeans need to arm up, good let them worry about other Europeans.
Before they can arm up, they have to pony up and therein lies the rub.
Cool. That’s about $100 billion less than the USA spends on defense each year. The EU +UK have a larger GDP than the USA but can’t even be bothered to spend out to match the USA when we have oceans and the Arctic between us and Russia to minimize the ‘threat’. Doesn’t seem like they take the ‘Russia Threat’ quite as seriously as they speak about.
Not quite sure how this is going to work, as the EU budget for the period averages 150-200bn EUR a year.
So either the body is right (it says $840 !) or this is going to mean they are going to get the 27 EU members, or maybe all the European countries to cough up.
Good luck with that.
The headline says $840 Billion. Most of us understand the cost will indeed be in the billions … and it’s about time they stepped up to defend themselves! Of course, Ursula is hoping for an EU army under EU control.
When your citizens realize that you cannot both rearm and indefinitely support ♾️ Muslims, the hangings will commence.
The EU politicians have no intention of letting their grift be canceled… if they can’t steal it from us, they’ll borrow money from China and steal that instead!
Another fantasy proposal from the EU.
She wants to ‘…boost defense manufacturing’ she says.
Good luck beefing up your industrial base to make tanks and ammo and planes and ships and subs when you’ve gutted your power infrastructure in favor of ‘renewables.’
Morons.
Then do it rather than talking about it and expecting the US to pay for it.
They don’t have the money. It doesn’t get much coverage here in the States. But, the socialized medicine systems throughout Europe are struggling to keep up with the giant influx of ‘migrants.’ But, the systems are notably under pressure in UK, France and Germany.
Well, looks like the un-elected bureaucrats in Brussels have finally gotten what they’ve always wanted. A supra-national, E.U. controlled, military establishment. Hope it all turns out well for them but I’ve a feeling it won’t.
guns n butter …. u didn’t want guns
just unlimited butter … and let the US
b your defensive wall … so u cud
spend spend spend on “free stuff”
how’s that working out now ….
I can remember Muammar Gaddafi
saying that he would flood Europe with the dregs of Africa and the ME. people laughed … hmmmm
how’s that working out for you…
“Europe can no longer be sure of U.S. protection”
That should have ended in 1946.
That simply wasn’t workable in 46. After 1990? Yeah, there are some things we arguably should have done differently.
This is a sham to get Trump to come back to the table with the little pig
They still think they can get America involved and draw us into something horrible
and the New York Times will be braying just that story
But, will he actually wear a suit or play dress-up soldier when he crawls back to the WH?
Pass the popcorn!
For comparison the annual US defense budget is $820B per year, so $157.76B to build a EU military force will likely be inadequate to the task. And even if they come up with the dough (spoiler alert: they won’t) there is the little matter of who will serve. Do you allow those hyperactive Muslim “refugees” to serve since there are not that many military-age native Europeans youths left (thanks to abortion and declining marriage rates). As many have noted Europe is locked in a demographic death spiral with birth rates well below the replacement rate, and giving an imported population with a taste for mass rape and stabbing access to military weapons might lead to some … er, friction.
But this is a moot point. The EU-topians are merely showing Trump and the barbaric Americans the middle finger. This is reminiscent of the loud promises Hollywood glitterati make to move to Canada (or Europe) permanently every time a Republican becomes President. Somehow those promises are never kept – and neither will this one.
America should maintain occupation of Europe for 500 years after the Next Great War 2.0 comes to a close.
You know, Europeans consider themselves our betters and think Americans are immature warmongers. But let’s remember that these weirdos have been next to each other for centuries and they still haven’t learned how to live in peace. They’ve also been the birthplaces of communism, fascism, and Nazism, three of the most destructive ideologies in history.
Nazism and fascism are kinda the same thing–Italy and Germany just had slightly different flavors.
Indeed. But both caused their own specific brand of misery so I included both.
How quickly we forget Franco’s Spain. He had popular support and ruled about 1935-1975, And he was a fascist. There are reasons why the countries that turned to fascism did so, and reasons why others resisted. It is silly to shriek fascism in the US, while it is a serious warning in most Latino countries. Argentina under Peron was fascist. Basically, I believe societies where everything flows from the top down are susceptible to fascism, while those with a healthy from the bottom-up flow are resistant.
I am TOTALLY for this EU plan! If they are actually planning to build their own defensive forces, the U.S. can withdraw our forces from Europe, and ideally from NATO. Frankly I haven’t seen any value to the U.S. in NATO since the collapse of the Soviet Union,
Even better, the E.U. can borrow money from U.S. banks, and buy U.S. weapons. I can’t imagine the current E.U. government being willing to seed investment in Arms manufacturers.
Of course, there’s a flaw in their plan… and that is that it will take years to build armies and even more years to arm it.
That’s precisely what will happen, the EU collectively cannot rely on the US and therefore the MUST rearm independently. Trashing the global order that the US used to be in control of is stacked with consequences
The Ukraine war machine will run out of warm squishy primates long before the entire $840 billion is spent.
Think of the trillion dollars or more the USA could have saved over the years if Europe had taken it on themselves to protect their citizens instead of relying on Uncle Sucker to do it. Instead they spent their time of socialist enterprises, green deal fiasco’s and virtue signaling the end of Europe by letting a muslim invasion cripple them. Trump, if anything, finally forced them to step up to the plate and face reality
“European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed an $840 ‘rearmament’ plan for Europe …”?
What can you buy for $840?!? 😁
Pretty funny reading an article that pokes France for Negative GDP numbers when that’s right round the corner for the US. The lack of self awareness is something else