In the three volumes of the budget law published yesterday by the Chamber, 1,782 pages in all, the financial commitment that the budget dedicates to the relaunch of Defense takes shape. And the contours of the use of the national safeguard clause are clarified, the one that allows interventions to be financed with the deficit in derogation of the constraints of the EU Pact, which up to now have remained rather in the shadows. The reason is technical. The bulk of the additional expenses do not appear in section I of the budget law, where there are the regulatory innovations that attract general attention; but it finds space in section II in which, often in the disinterest of the public debate, cuts and refinancing of the expenditure items managed by the various ministries are carried out. There the protagonism of the portfolio managed by Guido Crosetto emerges.
A reconstruction (not too easy) between articles, paragraphs and tables leads to measuring the weight of the Defense in the maneuver. The numbers reveal additional funds of 4.8 billion next year and 10.9 billion in the three-year period covered by the budget law; however, largely concentrated on 2027-28 precisely because the main driver of spending is the deficit allowed by the clause, which expires in two years. For example, the largest item falls within this time frame, dedicated to the "implementation of multi-year investment programs for the needs of national defense" (2.6 billion in 2027 and the same in 2028). One billion next year and 844 million the following will go to "operation", that is, the set of expenses that serve to guarantee operations and ordinary maintenance. The "Joint Rapid Response Force", a label that indicates immediately operational joint force plans to deal with crises, will absorb 267 million next year and the same amount the following year. While the NATO program for common defense (NSIP: NATO Security Investment Programme) will receive 134.8 and 196.7 between 2027 and 2028. The 164.3 million are drawn from the same basin (100.6 in the first year, the rest in the second) aimed at investments to renew and modernize the Carabinieri, in a framework which is completed with the 4.5 million in two years allocated to National Diving Centre.
The bill so far stops far from the 7.2 billion announced for the use of the clause. Which however, as also happens with energy, can collect measures already foreseen in the trends, in the bank game which has freed up spaces for ordinary maneuver. But the refinancing of the ministry does not exhaust the panorama of new defense measures, also present in section I of the budget law. Here the numbers refer to net debt, and not to the net balance to be financed as in section II: the sum therefore assumes that there are no temporal misalignments between the two quantities. The text of the maneuver contemplates 104 million over two years for "the infrastructural modernization of the Armed Forces", and 47.9 million for the Global Combat Air Programme, the new generation fighter developed by Leonardo with Bae Systems (UK) and Jaiec (Japan). The basket is then enriched by resources (especially national) to finance "regulatory interventions in defense matters", 1.47 billion in three years, and the hiring and overtime of the Carabinieri (174.9 million in the three-year period: similar measures, outside this calculation, affect the Police and the Financial Police).
Instead, 4.7 million go to "Safe Roads", the program dear above all to the League with the presence of the military in the cities, extended for now only until March 31st. The picture is then completed with the refinancing of international missions, which pass through the Ministry of Economy but are part of the integrated defense budget: from the maneuver they will receive 368.7 million next year and another 558.9 in 2028.
