ROME — Italy has confirmed it will not fund the purchase of U.S. weapons due to be delivered to Ukraine, the latest sign that Rome is seeking to place limits on its defense spending.
Addressing the Italian parliament this week, Defense Minister Guido Crosetto said Italy had decided against backing the NATO Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) scheme, under which nations agree to fund the purchase of U.S. arms which are then transferred to Ukraine.
“We have said no from the beginning, and it is still a no,” Crosetto said, in reference to PURL.
This month, NATO said contributors have now pledged nearly $6 billion to PURL, with cash to be focused on air defense systems for Ukraine.
NATO has said the scheme has helped fund the purchase from the U.S. of 70% of all missiles for Ukraine’s Patriot batteries and 90% of all ammunition used in other air defense systems.
Contributors include Germany, Canada, the Netherlands and Sweden, which said on Thursday it had now put $543 million in the scheme.
Italy’s decision not to participate follows its announcement it will probably not subscribe to the EU’s NEC scheme which allows member states to exempt a quantity of defense spending from calculations of annual deficit spending in order to allow extra arms purchases without breaking EU deficit rules.
Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni has also said Italy may not enter the EU’s SAFE loans program, which would have ensured €14.9 billion in cheap loans for defense spending.
Meloni has warned that her government needs to focus on covering the cost of rising fuel bills. She is focusing a reelection campaign next year at a time when defense spending is falling out of favor with voters.
Crosetto, who is known to be in favor of taking out SAFE loans, told parliament on Wednesday the decision on entering the scheme rested with Italy’s finance ministry.
“The decision to adhere or not adhere to SAFE cannot be taken by the Ministry of Defense,” he said.
Italian government sources told Defense News discussions were still ongoing over using the loans.
On Monday, Crosetto flew to the U.S. to meet US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who posted after the meeting they had agreed on the “urgent need for NATO allies to increase defense spending, expand defense industrial production, and field combat-credible military forces.”
On Thursday, Hegseth was in Brussels, telling a meeting of NATO defense ministers that, “Some of Nato’s largest economies, some of our richest countries, allies that are happiest to go on about the rules-based international order and middle powers banding together, still seem to think the era of free-riding is here.” He did not specify which countries he was referring to.
Even as Meloni speaks of the need to focus on spending at home to reduce the cost of living for voters, Italy has told NATO it will join alliance members in pushing defense spending to 5% of GDP – a total made up of 3.5% in weaponry and 1.5% in spending on domestic security.
Last year, Italy announced it had increased defense spending from around 1.5% to 2% by recategorizing existing spending on Italy’s tax police and coast guard, as well as outlays on space and cyber defense, as defense spending.
On June 11, Meloni said she would announce at the NATO summit in Ankara on July 7-8 that Italy’s defense spending would hit 2.8% of GDP this year.
That rise comes thanks to “growth of 0.71%, guaranteed above all by spending linked to homeland defense,” she told parliament.
Italian government sources told Defense News that the new spending announced by Meloni would cover border security, cyber, space and dual-use technology and would form part of the 1.5% extra envisaged by NATO.
Tom Kington is the Italy correspondent for Defense News.