BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union finance ministers started talks on Saturday over a joint defence fund that would buy and own defence equipment and charge members a fee for its use, as a way to spend more on defence without burdening national accounts with more debt.
The fund, called the European Defence Mechanism, was proposed by the Bruegel think tank in a paper for the ministerial discussions as a way of addressing concerns about how highly-indebted countries could pay for costly military equipment.
