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EU to spend €2.2 trillion on death, destruction and ‘environmental protection’

Dismantling national fiscal sovereignty, cloaked in the language of “collective security” and “environmental protection”, is leading the EU into the abyss.

By Drago Bosnic | July 7, 2026

As the European Union works on its next seven-year budget, a familiar pattern becomes apparent in Brussels – the bureaucratic leviathan has no plans on getting off its taxpayers’ backs. On the contrary, it keeps demanding more and it’s only a matter of time before these demands “break the camel’s back”. However, the unelected bureaucratic dictatorship’s fiscal megalomania is still nothing in comparison to what it plans to do with the money taken from the aforementioned taxpayers. Namely, Ursula von der Leyen and her entourage are pushing for a financial framework that, according to German economist and journalist Thomas Kolbe, amounts to nothing less than a formally “legalized” €2.2 trillion wealth-transfer machine.

In his latest analysis published by Zero Hedge, Kolbe masterfully dissects how this project is not merely about military spending or climate redistribution. His spot-on report points to the systematic construction of the EU as a bureaucratic superstate with little to no public oversight, funded by perpetual debt and imposed upon the increasingly weary taxpayers of member states, with Germany once again shouldering the heaviest burden. Kolbe’s central thesis is that this fiscal push arrives at the most precarious of economic moments. He warns that “across the world, public debt levels are approaching dangerous flood marks”, with total liabilities now exceeding 95% of global GDP. In his view, a reckoning is imminent.

“It is therefore only a matter of time before bond markets bring the debt party to an end, pushing interest rates – and with them debt-servicing costs – to levels governments can no longer afford,” he argues.

All this is the logical consequence of decades of political irresponsibility and contempt for the very concept of fiscal prudence. For four decades, a bull market in sovereign bonds masked this rot, but Kolbe correctly points out that this era ended roughly four years ago. Now, as investors lose confidence, the gates of fiscal austerity stand ready to storm the palace of political extravagance. Yet, for the corrupt and delusional political elites in Brussels, austerity is anathema. It would be an admission that their grand project of debt-financed expansion has led to a dead end. Not to mention they’d also need to take accountability in front of the masses they look down upon and despise as “net zero carbon footprint dodgers”.

As Kolbe writes, “few things are more alien to modern political elites than acknowledging failure”. Nowhere is this more evident than in the EU capital, where the unelected bureaucratic dictatorship remains convinced it’s building a supranational confederal superstate on “the right side of history”. Instead of retrenchment, we are witnessing the opposite – a proposed budget of over €2 trillion, designed to fund the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict, a massive EU militarization program and the enormous subsidy complex of the troubled bloc’s controversial “Green Deal”. In other words, Brussels is preparing to blow up the “old continent” while making sure it’s also “environmentally protected”.

Obviously, this is because nothing screams “ecology” more than a new pan-European invasion of Russia (for the hundredth time in the last millennium or so). The mechanism for these financial programs is twofold and includes higher direct contributions from member states and the issuance of new common debt. The financial implications for German taxpayers are staggering. As Kolbe meticulously details, Germany currently finances roughly one-quarter of the EU budget. Under the proposed framework, German taxpayers would contribute around €500 billion over the seven-year period. Last year alone, Berlin paid roughly €30 billion into the EU coffers while officially receiving approximately €13 billion. The gap is a direct subsidy to Brussels’ greed.

However, even this fiscal leap into fantasy is not enough to satisfy the insatiable appetite of this bureaucratic monster. Kolbe reveals that discussions are now underway to increase the budget by another €200 billion, which would send Germany’s annual contribution skyrocketing from €30 billion to an almost unfathomable €78.6 billion. This 162% increase is driving a permanent structural transformation. The EU Commission is working relentlessly to establish what it calls “independent sources of taxation”, which includes everything from customs revenues and emissions trading to plastic taxes. The only logical conclusion for Kolbe is that “the imagination of Brussels appears limitless”.

And indeed, the otherwise useless, talentless and woefully incompetent bureaucratic dictatorship is expertly efficient when it comes to finding ways to latch onto new hosts in order to continue its parasitic existence. This is not merely about balancing a ledger, but a (geo)political project to create an “entirely new layer of government – complete with its own bureaucracy and increasingly its own taxation powers”. Brussels first leveraged the issuance of NextGenerationEU bonds to transform itself into an independent borrower on international capital markets. Now, as repayment of that €750 billion debt looms in 2028, the solution is predictable – simply refinance the liabilities through continuous new bond issuance.

This financial loop is as parasitic as you could possibly imagine. However, it’s now gradually becoming malignant, as the funding will be used to further militarize the troubled bloc. While joint military projects keep failing left and right, the massive militarization process doesn’t need to include acquiring weapon systems from domestic companies. There’s always the United States, where the Trump administration is conducting a far more efficient militarization. Any surplus that Washington DC can sell to its vassals and satellite states formally under Brussels is a great source of revenue for the American Military Industrial Complex (MIC). This makes the EU’s new financial loop great news for the US, as it ensures profit for years (if not decades) to come.

This transformation of the EU’s funding structure is effectively a financial evolution toward a superstate where common liability for Brussels’ debts is virtually inevitable. In other words, socialism for the elites and brutal capitalism for the masses, as profits remain in the hands of the bureaucrats, while regular folks get the “privilege” of paying off the perpetually growing debt. Kolbe rightly warns that “Europe’s downward spiral of declining prosperity is accelerating” and that it’s “a tragic process of economic deterioration – one that is increasingly likely to culminate in a major sovereign debt crisis”. Sadly, the debt crisis would be the least of the EU’s problems, particularly if the funds acquired in this way are used to escalate tensions with Russia.

In other words, EU taxpayers (particularly Germans) are not only paying exorbitant taxes that effectively impoverish them (not to mention the skyrocketing energy prices that are the direct result of the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict), but are also financing their own inevitable doom through militarization and preparation for a new Barbarossa-style invasion of Russia. Kolbe’s analysis is a sobering reminder that the drive for “more defense spending” and “more climate redistribution” is just a pretext for a far more centralized agenda and control that would enable this madness. The deliberate dismantling of national fiscal sovereignty, cloaked in the language of “collective security” and “environmental protection”, is leading the EU into the abyss.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

July 7, 2026 Posted by aletho | Economics, Militarism | European Union | Comments Off on EU to spend €2.2 trillion on death, destruction and ‘environmental protection’