For the defense sector, the expenditure benchmark in the context of the spending review was set at 0,9% of GDP from the current 1,1%, a cut of 0,2 percentage points which is worth almost 3,5 billion of Euro. This is what was declared today by the government commissioner for the spending review, Carlo Cottarelli, during a hearing before the Defense and Chamber commissions.
The figure was obtained from the difference between the total resources used in 2013, 18,5 billion, equal to 1,5% of GDP, and the benchmark set by the commissioner, defined instead at 0,9% of GDP. Those two tenths of a percentage point, equal to about 3,5 billion euros, therefore constitute the pool of possible savings on which the government could draw to reduce spending in the sector. However, the "savings margin" remains on a hypothetical level since, Cottarelli explained, "decisions on defense savings are purely of a political nature. My role is only to make proposals, the decisions will then be taken by politics".
In any case, Cottarelli underlined, "it is not proposed to fully fill the gap over the three-year period". There is therefore no hypothesis of recovering all these resources, especially since, the Commissioner specified, "the proposed reduction by 2016" is lower (approximately 2,5 billion).
