EU budget negotiators urged to include green energy in increased security spending

Bolstering the resilience of Europe’s energy complex is as important as pouring money into armaments and troops, a group of political analysts warns in a letter to finance ministers as negotiations on the EU’s next trillion-euro budget ramp up.

“Long-term stability relies not only on military strength but also on reducing our dependency on volatile energy supplies,” runs the letter signed by energy and security analysts from six leading think tanks including Carnegie Europe and the Jacques Delors Institute.

They call on governments and EU top brass including budget commissioner Piotr Serafin to adopt a “holistic approach” to security during talks on the EU’s next seven-year ‘multi-annual financial framework’ or MFF, as the budget is known.

“It is not a question of choosing between defence or green energy spending — both are essential and mutually reinforcing,” they wrote. “Neglecting one undermines the other.”

The call from leading policy think tanks comes after the European Commission published a rearmament plan that proposes to exclude defence spending from the fiscal straight-jacket that prevents EU governments – at least in theory – from running budget deficits of over 3%.

The EU executive also proposed that the central budget could be directed towards defence spending, for example through the cohesion funds intended to bridge economic disparities between regions in the 27-member bloc.

The Commission plans to present the next seven-year budget in July, but the topic is already being discussed among EU member states, with an initial exchange of views at European Council summit of heads of government in Brussels on 20 March.

Mats Engström, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and a signatory of