With “SAFE” or better known as “ReArm Europe”, the EU plans to raise up to 150 billion euros to then lend the money to member states to boost their defense spending. However, the European Parliament has warned the Commission that it could take it to court over its plan to bypass elected MEPs, causing a serious crisis in Brussels.
In particular, the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metzola, issued a warning on Tuesday, in a letter to the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, calling on her to change the legal basis for the creation of the SAFE program.
The Commission invoked Article 122 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union to create the SAFE programme, which allows member states to immediately adopt an EU proposal “if serious difficulties arise in the supply of certain products” or if a member state is “threatened with serious difficulties caused by natural disasters or exceptional events beyond its control”.
“Reconsider, or I will take you to the Court of Justice of the EU”
The programme is a key pillar of the Commission’s “Preparedness 2030” proposal, which aims to invest hundreds of billions of euros in defence across the EU before the end of the decade, as some intelligence agencies believe Russia could be in a position to attack a European country.
In her letter, Metsola stresses that Parliament’s legal affairs committee (JURI) “unanimously decided” at a meeting last month that Article 122 “does not constitute the appropriate legal basis for the proposed regulation.”
“The European Parliament does not question the value of this proposal for a regulation,” adds the EP President, but on the contrary is “deeply concerned” that its adoption without an appropriate legal basis would “put democratic legitimacy at risk, undermining Parliament’s legislative and oversight functions.”
It calls on von der Leyen “to reconsider the choice of legal basis for this proposal” so that both co-legislators are involved and warns that if the Council adopts the regulation using Article 122, the European Parliament will consider its right to refer the matter to the Court of Justice of the EU.
Commission appeasement attempt
A Commission spokesman said the EU executive “will always be available to explain why Article 122 of the Treaty was chosen as the appropriate legal basis.”
“Europe is facing an unprecedented security threat,” Thomas Regnier argued, explaining: “As President von der Leyen stated in her political guidelines, Article 122 will only be used in exceptional circumstances, such as the ones we are experiencing today.”
Andrius Kubilius, Commissioner for Defence and Space, told MEPs in the Security and Defence Committee last Monday that the Council could adopt the regulation by the end of the month.
Member states will then have two months to submit their requests, while the European Commission will have four months to examine them. This means that the first disbursements under SAFE could be made before the end of the year.
It should be noted that Article 122 was also used in the past by the Commission to react quickly to the Covid-19 pandemic and to speed up permits for renewable energy sources at the height of the energy crisis.
