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No deal on UK access to EU’s defense spending plan

BRUSSELS — Talks between the European Commission and the U.K. on taking part in the bloc’s €150 billion Security Action for Europe loans-for-weapons plan failed to meet Friday’s deadline, three diplomats told POLITICO.

Commission wanted to wrap the talks by the end of this week to give member states time to adapt their national defense spending plans that use SAFE loans to take into account greater participation by the U.K. and Canada. The deadline for capitals to do so is Nov. 30.

However, EU officials said that London is under the impression that there’s no sense of urgency.

One U.K. official said they did not recognize a deadline as having been imposed Friday, adding that they believed there was more time to negotiate and they would do so in good faith.

The Commission has slashed the amount of money it wants the U.K. to pay to take part in SAFE. The new ask is for €2 billion, a significant drop from the original demand of between €4.5 billion and €6.5 billion. However, it’s still much more than London is willing to pay to participate in joint procurements financed by SAFE, which some officials estimate in the tens of millions of euros.

Canada is also negotiating access to SAFE procurements, and those talks are going much more smoothly, EU diplomats said.

Ottawa is expected to pay a few hundred million euros to join SAFE; London’s offer of only tens of millions creates a mismatch as the U.K. has a larger defense industry that is more closely integrated with other European countries, meaning it stands to reap greater benefits from SAFE than Canada.

Talks are now expected to move to a higher political level, possibly at the G20 in Johannesburg. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is there along with Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Esther Webber contributed reporting from London.

This article has been updated.

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Writers at Lord’s Press come from a range of professional backgrounds, including history, diplomacy, heraldry, and public administration. Many publish anonymously or under initials—a practice that reflects the publication’s long-standing emphasis on discretion and editorial objectivity. While they bring expertise in European nobility, protocol, and archival research, their role is not to opine, but to document. Their focus remains on accuracy, historical integrity, and the preservation of events and individuals whose significance might otherwise go unrecorded.

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