Europe, plan of one million rounds of ammunition per year
In the European Parliament, the People's Party and Renew Europe have asked to give a fast track to the ammunition plan, presented last week by the Commission. The proposal of the EU executive consists in investing 500 million euros of the Community budget in the military industry, with the aim of increasing the annual production of ammunition to one million units to support Ukraine's resistance in the long term and restore stocks of member countries supplying Kiev. The Eurochamber accepted the request of the Popolari and Renew Europe, thus reducing the analysis times of the parliamentary commissions to get approval as soon as possible. The final vote of MEPs could already be held at the mini-plenary scheduled for May 31 in Brussels.
The European Parliament approved the emergency procedure for the ammunition plan with 518 votes in favour, 59 against and 31 abstentions. Strasbourg had also resorted to article 163 of its regulation during the Covid-19 pandemic, with the approval of the green pass, and during the recent energy crisis, on the occasion of the vote on the management of gas storage. The European Commission's proposal provides for the mobilization of 500 million euros from the EU budget until 2025. To avoid the debt item, Brussels has proposed using the resources of the cohesion funds and the Recovery Fund, therefore in the Italian case of the National Plan of Recovery and Resilience (PNRR9).
The Recovery Fund «was built for three main actions: the green transition, the digital transition and resilience. Intervening punctually to support industrial projects moving towards resilience, including defence, is part of this third pillar,” said EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton. A convoluted and at least questionable deduction, which attempts to justify the change of destination to funds already promised to strengthen health care and public schools or to ecological transition.
While Brussels is deciding on the ammunition plan, in Italy Parliament has given the go-ahead for the purchase of the U212 NFS submarine, which will cost the public coffers 674 million euros. The operation is part of the completion of the Near Future Submarine (NFS) program conceived in 2018 by the Navy and the Ministry of Defence, then led by Roberta Pinotti, for a total expenditure of 2.68 billion euros.
