Italy will use the SAFE funds, an EU instrument that provides loans of up to €150 billion for defense investments.
Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani announced this during a hearing in Parliament before the joint Foreign Affairs and Defense Committees of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate.
The government, Tajani specified, "has reserved 14.9 billion" of Safe resources: it will decide by the end of the year how much of this money to use to purchase weapons.
The Safe program, "as it has been set up, is a tool for financing military spending, not an additional one to that budgeted for. Therefore, in Italy, Safe is an alternative to the BOT. It's a completely technical decision that the minister will make by the end of the year: of the €14.9 billion Minister Tajani mentioned earlier, we will evaluate how much of it can be used technically as an alternative to the BOT and CCT, from a financial convenience standpoint," explained Guido Crosetto.
The 14.9 billion, Tajani explained, is the maximum ceiling: «Then by the end of the year we will decide how much to use, probably between 6 and 9».
(Unioneonline)