Greece will make a request to Brussels for the exemption of defence spending, i.e. the escape clause, from further spending in the coming years, as announced by the Minister of National Economy and Finance, Kyriakos Pierrakakis, noting that it will essentially be possible to create the budgetary space to cover defence spending for the coming years.
Speaking to ERTNews TV, the minister said that "the increase from 2025 to 2026 is about half a billion euros that has been planned and this also applies to the following years. There is a very specific defence spending programme that we have presented as a government." As he explained, the 500 million euros in the 2026 budget is excluded from the spending rule calculation.
"What people must understand - and I personally want to emphasise - is that the European Union has had other fiscal rules for a long time now. What have we learned? That we still need high primary surpluses, but you cannot spend it every year," he concluded.