Berliner Tageblatt - ReArm Europe? EU re-thinks name after objections

Earlier this month European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen unveiled an initiative to help ramp up military budgets that she says could mobilise up to 800 billion euros.

The name: ReArm Europe.

It won broad support from EU countries who see a need to take a quantum leap on defence.

But for Spain and Italy, two countries whose defence budgets lag well below NATO's benchmark, one of the objections was its title.

"I don't like the term rearm," Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said at an EU summit Thursday. "I think that the European Union is a political project of soft power."

Sanchez, along with his Italian counterpart Giorgia Meloni, has pushed for a broad range of other issues to be covered in the programme -- including border protection and cyber security.

Part of the opposition to the name comes from the fact that talk of spending on weapons still goes down poorly in countries further from Russia, even more than three years into Moscow's war on Ukraine.

Under pressure the EU's executive arm, the European Commission, appears to have conceded the point.

It now refers to a broader "Readiness 2030" package aimed at putting the bloc in a stronger position by the end of the decade.

"We are sensitive to the fact that the name as such may trigger some sensitivities in some member states," commission spokeswoman Paula Pinho said Friday.

"If this makes it more difficult to convey the message to all citizens in the EU of the need to take these measures, of course, then we all are ready to not only to listen, but also to reflect it in the way we communicate."

The EU's plan isn't the first military initiative to face problems with its name in Brussels.

Across town at NATO headquarters last year Germany refused to let the military alliance call a proposal to help coordinate arms supplies to Ukraine a "mission" -- much to the chagrin of other members.

In the end they had to opt for the clumsy acronym NSATU - standing for NATO Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine.

J.Fankhauser--BTB