ECB’s Villeroy: Limitless defence spending should be out of the question

PARIS (Reuters) – European Central Bank (ECB) member Francois Villeroy de Galhau said on Thursday that while a ramp-up in defence spending was needed in France, spending on this could not be limitless given the high level of France’s public deficit and debt.

“We cannot have a policy of spending whatever it takes regarding defence spending,” Villeroy, who is also head of the Bank of France, told BFM TV, in reference to France’s public spending policy during the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure the economy was propped up and companies did not go bust.

(Reporting by Benoit Van Overstraeten; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta)