EU leaders on Thursday broadly welcomed a blueprint from Brussels to help ramp up defence spending to face Russia -- but a raft of countries pressed to go further and deploy joint borrowing.
US President Donald Trump has turbocharged calls for Europe to rearm by casting doubt on Washington's central role in NATO and making overtures towards Russia on Ukraine.
Fears are rife that if Trump forces a bad deal on Kyiv it will leave Europe facing the menace of an emboldened Kremlin that could look to attack elsewhere in the coming years.
In a bid to put the EU's 27 countries in a better position to defend themselves by 2030, Brussels on Wednesday detailed proposals it says could mobilise up to 800 billion euros ($875 billion).
Those include relaxing budget rules to allow countries to spend more on defence and a 150-billion-euro programme of EU-backed loans.
But the proposals have failed to quell long-standing calls led by France for the bloc to be more ambitious and rerun the sort of massive joint borrowing it used to fund the recovery from the Covid pandemic.
Latvian Prime Minister Evika Silina described the plan put on the table by Brussels as just a "first step".
"We are open for more discussions how we can find even more finances," she said as leaders gathered for a summit in Brussels.
Greek premier Kyriakos Mitsotakis was more explicit, pushing for the EU to move in a "more ambitious direction towards the provision of grants to European member states in order to make the important investments that they need."
The debate roughly pitches eastern countries most worried about the threat of Russia and those struggling with high debt against fiscal purists unwilling to finance spending by others.
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