SAFE and Italy’s Hesitation

<jats:p>On 28 July 2026, Italian Foreign Minister, Antonio Tajani, announced that the government had “decided to use SAFE, requesting an intervention of 14.9 billion euros by the end of the year”. He corrected himself within hours: the 14.9 billion had merely been “booked”. Defence Minister, Guido Crosetto, added that the SAFE decision is a genuinely political choice that the Houses of Parliament will be asked to authorise. Budgetary sovereignty, we argue, is not a residue of national sovereignty to be overcome on the path toward the common defence.</jats:p>