EU Should Prioritize Defense, Not Climate Change Funding - Heritage.org

EU Should Prioritize Defense, Not Climate Change Funding | The Heritage Foundation

This week, President Biden is hosting NATO leaders here in Washington for a summit. According to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, the agenda will include highlighting the need for increased defense spending and deterrence capabilities across the alliance.

American conservatives should applaud European NATO members for spending more on their own defense, which enables the United States to focus on its most pressing security challenges elsewhere. Europe’s wealthy Western European governments, however, must do more if the Continent is to finally take charge of its own defense.

Far more can be done. Both the national governments of Western Europe and the European Union spend massive sums on politicized international projects that drain Europe’s coffers and do nothing for the security or well-being of citizens. Consider the hundreds of billions of dollars being spent on climate change financing.

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The European Union and its member states set aside almost 580 billion euros (about $625 billion) in the 2021-2027 multiannual budget to “achieve climate neutrality by 2050.”

This plan includes billions of euros spent on international climate change finance, a process that includes billions of dollars being taken from European (and American) taxpayers and transferred to foreign governments.

In 2009, then-President Barack Obama and most European leaders agreed that the developed nations of the world should transfer $100 billion annually to “support climate action in developing countries.” The acolytes of climate change are complaining that this goal has not yet been reached and that only around $80 billion is being given by the United States and Europe to the rest of the world. The U.N. climate change secretariat, naturally, has determined that developing countries really ought to be transferring trillions per year to the rest of the world.

Conservatives across Europe and in the United States need to halt the transfer of national wealth out of the bank accounts of their citizens and into the hands of foreign governments in the name of climate change. This money would be better spent on the infrastructure and defense needs of Europe and the United States or simply left in the hands of individual citizens through tax cuts.

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When the Cold War ended, defense spending decreased dramatically across Europe. The governments of European NATO members decided to prioritize these politicized initiatives over the security of their own citizens. In 1989, the average percentage of gross domestic product spent by European NATO members on defense was 2.4%. By 2019, that number had fallen to 1.5%, well below the 2% required in the alliance. The last couple of years have amply demonstrated that the world is still dangerous and that national governments need to allocate resources toward the security of their populations.

Governments have a moral obligation, first and foremost, to the people they represent. Progressive elites have for far too long put the needs of the rest of the world above those of their own citizens. Conservatives in Europe and the United States must resist the demands for increased wealth transfers to foreign governments. That money would be better spent on the security and infrastructure of Europe and the United States.

This piece originally appeared in The Washington Times