Brussels, 2 July 2025 (Lusa) – The President of the European Council, António Costa, says that investing in defence while preserving the European Union (EU) welfare state is essential for “collective security”, highlighting the US push for European unity around NATO objectives.
“Those who present the choice between the welfare state and investing in defence as an option are committing collective suicide because no one mobilises to defend themselves unless it is to defend their own way of life. And what characterises our European way of life is precisely the existence of this strong welfare state,” said António Costa in an interview with the Lusa news agency in Brussels on the occasion of his six months in office.
“This is absolutely essential because defence goes beyond military spending; defence is the mobilisation of society as a whole to defend itself. And what is society defending itself? It is defending its values and its way of life,” he added.
For the leader of the institution that brings together the heads of government and state of the EU, “it is essential to maintain this welfare state and have the capacity to organise the economy to generate the resources necessary to sustain this investment in defence.”
At a time of ongoing war in Ukraine caused by the Russian invasion and geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, António Costa stresses that “Europe has changed radically” because “people now generally understand that genuine peace requires defence”.
“Therefore, European defence has become a reality and that is what, in March 2022 […], the European Council decided, which was to take on greater possibilities in the area of defence,” he points out.
In his view, the calls by US President Donald Trump for increased defence spending since his return to the US administration earlier this year have contributed to this.
“President [Donald] Trump” Trump, paradoxically, helped to resolve this because in Europe the prevailing view was [among] those who believed that strategic autonomy and strengthening the European pillar of NATO fostered a distinct approach from the Americans and reflected a French initiative that shaped relations with the United States, [but] the truth is that, with President Trump, [...] both sides converge on the same position,” he says.
In this interview with Lusa, António Costa concludes: “The best way to preserve the transatlantic relationship today is with a Europe of defence, a European pillar of NATO and greater strategic autonomy for Europe.”
Last week, meeting in Brussels, EU leaders committed to adequately funding increased defence spending, coordinating such investment to do “better together”, given the new target set by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) days earlier.
EU heads of government and state also called on the European Commission and the head of EU diplomacy, Kaja Kallas, to present a roadmap for achieving EU common defence readiness by 2030.
At the NATO summit, the 32 allies of the Atlantic Alliance committed to spending, by 2035, 3.5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on traditional military expenditure (armed forces, equipment and training) and an additional 1.5% of gross domestic product on cybersecurity infrastructure, preparedness and strategic resilience, an increase on the current target of 2%.
Between 2021 and 2024, EU member states’ defence spending rose by more than 30% to €326 billion, equivalent to around 1.9% of EU gross domestic product.
Portugal invested around 1.55% of its gross domestic product in defence last year and has already said that this year it will reach 2%.
On 1 December 2024, António Costa began his two-and-a-half-year term as President of the European Council, marking the first time a socialist and a Portuguese national have held this position.
ANE/ADB // ADB.
Lusa
