Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis insisted on Thursday, ahead of a summit of EU leaders, that the Union must play a bigger role in finding tens of billions of euros for countries to pay for increased military spending.

Kyriakos Mitsotakis said he would use the meeting in Brussels to call on the European Union to move further to a “tipping point where we realize we need to take more responsibility for European defence” and to support EU-level lending for joint projects.

Russia’s war against Ukraine, which has included recent violations of EU airspace by enemy drones and Russian fighter jets in recent months, has turned attention to collective security.

“My argument is very simple: if defense is the supreme European public good, we need European structures and European funding to develop our defense capabilities,” Mitsotakis said in an interview with POLITICO.

“There is an obvious problem. We don’t discuss it openly, but could we imagine a scenario where we would have a common European loan facility aimed at supporting European defense projects?” he added.

“I would certainly support it, provided that there are projects that clearly meet the European public good criteria… let’s use European money to do things that we cannot do at national level,” Mr Mitsotakis said.

While the European Commission has proposed a series of plans to loosen fiscal rules and allow capitals to borrow more capital to finance a large-scale retrofitting program, countries remain deadlocked on the idea of ​​debt relief to free up additional capital.

A number of cross-border projects have been identified, including anti-drone measures, but making the investment still largely depends on national governments.

“I think the challenge is whether we can have additional funding and whether this additional funding can be accompanied by conditions that will push us in the direction of stronger preparation,” said Mr Mitsotakis, “which will be joint procurement, the development of new technologies, especially drones and artificial intelligence, and I think the Commission and the European institutions have a role to play clear role”.

According to a draft joint statement drawn up by ambassadors from all 27 EU countries ahead of Thursday’s summit, the European Union will agree to “increasingly orient defense investment towards joint development, production and procurement”.