Britain, Netherlands, Finland, Poland say they are making progress on defence plan
WARSAW, July 6 (Reuters) – Britain, the Netherlands, Finland and Poland have made “significant progress” on the Multilateral Defense Mechanism planned by the four countries and aim to establish it by 2027, they said in a joint statement on Monday.
Defense financing will be the main topic of the NATO summit to be held in Ankara this week. MDM is one of several rival initiatives aimed at funneling more private money to rearmament countries.
“We benefited from the support of a broader group of allies as we developed the technical details of this model,” the four countries said in a statement.
They said they would work to expand the coalition of countries involved in the project and would move on to the next phase of developing the mechanism with the countries that announced their participation in the autumn.
Another important project in the increasingly crowded field of defense financing initiatives is the Defense, Security and Resilience Bank.
Canada aims to announce approximately 10 founding countries for the DSRB at the NATO summit. Poland’s finance ministry did not immediately respond to an emailed question about whether there were discussions about joining the DSRB.
Britain had resisted joining the DSRB, but finance minister Rachel Reeves told the country’s parliament in June that it was “currently working with Canada on the project”.
“The multilateral defense mechanism will allow us to jointly procure equipment and stockpile it off balance sheet, providing better value for money for taxpayers and enabling innovative forms of financing to fund our defence,” Reeves said.
“We are also working closely with Canada on the multilateral defense mechanism and the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank, which provides loans to small businesses in the supply chain, so we have a model that will help us better finance defense at home and across Europe.”
(Reporting by Alan Charlish, Barbara Erling, Editing by Alexandra Hudson, Aidan Lewis)
