President Donald Trump is seeking to stave off a court order that requires him to begin giving the BBC financial details on his business empire by Thursday in connection with a defamation lawsuit he is pressing against the network.

Trump’s attorneys filed the emergency stay motion Wednesday with Miami-based U.S. Magistrate Judge Enjoliqué Lett, urging her to lift the order she issued last month that the British TV broadcaster is entitled to information on the financial performance of hundreds of Trump’s companies because he claimed his “brand, properties and businesses” were damaged by a documentary the BBC aired in the U.K. in 2024.

Trump’s lawyers said in court filings that the demands for information are part of an effort by the BBC “to wrongly exploit this litigation for its own political benefit.”

The BBC’s attorneys contend that the records are relevant to assessing Trump’s claims of massive damages. His initial lawsuit appeared to seek $10 billion, although a form his attorneys submitted to the court listed $5 billion.

Trump’s lawsuit, filed last December, claims that the documentary defamed him by splicing together segments of his Jan. 6, 2021, speech in a manner that made it sound like he was directly calling for the violent attack on the Capitol that followed. The BBC has apologized for the editing, but said it was not an intentional effort to distort Trump’s words and isn’t legally actionable.

Trump’s legal team is also asking the judge overseeing the lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Roy Altman, to overturn Lett’s order and to allow Trump to amend his lawsuit to trim out some of the language that led the magistrate judge to conclude that the financial performance of Trump’s businesses should be subject to discovery.

The proposed new complaint “focuses on President Trump’s damages allegations on the reputational harm that he has suffered, which is at the core of this defamation action,” Trump attorney Alejandro Brito wrote. “That focus matters because third-party discovery here has expanded well beyond the issues actually in dispute.”

The text of the new proposed lawsuit is currently under seal, but Trump’s lawyers say it describes “personal reputational harm as the primary compensatory injury” and continues to seek punitive damages against the BBC.

The BBC has moved to dismiss the lawsuit on various grounds, including that the court lacks jurisdiction over the London-based broadcaster. Altman, a Trump appointee, has yet to hold a hearing or rule on that motion.

Trump’s attorneys say the revised lawsuit they want to file would add new allegations to support the court’s jurisdiction over the suit, including that producers gave interviewees in the U.S. detailed instructions on how to access the documentary over the internet and that the BBC “received contemporaneous notice that its geoblocking [aimed at preventing viewing in the U.S.] was failing.”

An attorney for the BBC did not immediately respond to request for comment.

Italy will use extra leeway from the EU to spend billions of euros on energy and defense, Finance Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti told members of the country’s parliament on Wednesday.

Rome is set to boost its expenditure on green energy and defense over the coming three years, said Giorgetti following a relaxation of rules from Brussels, which allows the additional spending to be exempted from the EU’s strict spending targets and waived from Rome’s deficit figures.

Italy is poised to issue a formal request to the European Commission — laying out the investments it intends to undertake with the extra flexibility — by a mid-August deadline.

Giorgetti said Italy will request to spend an additional 0.6 percent of gross domestic product on green energy investments and 0.9 percent on defense — the full amount that is envisaged under the new fiscal guidelines.

The additional defense spending will “include both new multi-year investment programs and proposals to reallocate resources already provided for under current legislation,” Giorgetti told MPs. Italy’s parliament is expected to approve Giorgetti’s request to the Commission on Wednesday.

The extra flexibility is aimed at reducing dependence on fossil fuels and moving toward NATO’s target to spend 5 percent of GDP on defense. With 2 percent of GDP allocated to defense in 2025, Italy is among the alliance’s spending laggards.

However, the decision to raise military spending is set to inflame political tensions within the country ahead of a crucial election year that will see incumbent Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni seek a second mandate.

The governing coalition is split on the issue, and the right-wing League party — from which Giorgetti himself hails — has repeatedly campaigned against spending more money to counter the Russian threat.

In a further constraint, the government is under heavy pressure from the right-wing, Russia-friendly National Future party led by former Gen. Roberto Vannacci, which is eating into support for the other governing parties, according to the polls.  

More leeway

In June, the Commission gave EU countries suffering from the ongoing energy crisis more fiscal breathing room by exempting some green investments from public spending rules.

The goal was to allow heavily indebted governments to mobilize resources for green expenditure, including subsidies for electric vehicles, geothermal and solar energy to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. Italy lobbied the EU to offer this concession after the war in the Middle East fueled a surge in oil prices.

However, Giorgetti failed to lay out which green investments will be included in Italy’s request to the Commission.

In another gaping omission, he did not reveal whether Italy will tap into the EU’s cheap loans for defense — another divisive issue within the government coalition.

Rome had initially earmarked €15 billion under the Security Action for Europe (SAFE) program, prompting defense companies to factor in those investments.

Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani recently suggested that Rome will use the SAFE money, but said the exact amount will be decided later in the year.

Jacopo Barigazzi contributed to this report.

At this month’s NATO summit in Ankara, allies announced billions of dollars in new arms deals and reaffirmed their commitment to spend more on defense. European governments have made the pledge, and the money is real: European defense spending has doubled since 2019, and by 2030, European NATO member countries are projected to spend in excess of €800 billion a year, up €300 billion from 2025, with equipment spending alone nearly doubling.

But committing money is the easy part. The harder question is whether Europe’s defense industry can turn it into equipment fast enough to matter. Europe’s largest defense manufacturers’ order books now average more than five years for production, and some are closer to nine. Money is flowing in faster than industry can turn it into equipment. But a purchase order is not equipment that can be deployed on the ground and the air.

European countries have long duplicated capabilities rather than pooling them.

The bottleneck sits in the defense industrial system. Deterrence relies on the chain from funding to contracts, then through production, deployment into services, then rapid innovation in the field. Europe’s next goal comes after the spending promise. The continent fields six times as many weapons platforms as the United States, because countries have long duplicated capabilities rather than pooling them. Production ends up split across many small runs that never reach an efficient scale. Ukraine, under pressure, has shown how fast a defense system can move, adapting tactics in weeks and building drone detection networks from consumer electronics. Europe needs to catch up and then accelerate.

Four moves would help Europe accelerate.

The first is multi-speed procurement. Software-led systems such as drones and targeting improve in rapid cycles throughout their deployment and need procurement that can keep up. Israel’s Iron Dome started out as far less capable than it is today and improved continuously in service. European defense ministries have already set up high-speed procurement units with dedicated teams and greater risk tolerance. These need to become mainstream, rather than the exception.

Collaboration in procurement, maintenance and training brings costs down and delivery forward.

The second is military collaboration to reduce fragmentation. Collaboration in procurement, maintenance and training brings costs down and delivery forward. The Tempest project, where the U.K., Italy and Japan are jointly building a next-generation fighter, demonstrates the model: shared development costs that no single country could carry alone. Recent bilateral maritime agreements, and Romania’s use of EU funding to buy European while expanding production at home, show the same logic spreading.

The third is industrial consolidation, which is already underway and needs to move faster. Companies are driving it themselves. Airbus, Leonardo and Thales have agreed to merge their space divisions into a single joint venture with roughly €6.5 billion in revenue and 25,000 employees, and European defense mergers and acquisitions rose 35 percent year over year in the first half of 2025. McKinsey analysis finds that consolidation across key supply chain segments could unlock around €9 billion in annual synergies, more than the current equipment budgets of 24 of Europe’s 30 NATO members. The deepest opportunity sits below the big primes, among the thousands of tier two, three and four suppliers that still duplicate one another’s work. Europe can speed this up by harmonizing requirements, reducing national carve-outs and letting industry do the combining. Consolidation is only half the task. Europe also needs to build sheer capacity — more shipyards, more assembly lines, more of the physical plants that turn orders into hardware — and the capital to fund it. In several categories, Europe simply lacks enough places to build.

Real deterrence means difficult choices, and a public that understands the importance and the cost of security.

The fourth is regulatory unlocking. Full scale-up demands skilled workers retrained, accredited and security cleared from other industries; production sites with preapproved permitting; and alignment of export controls across European allies. These regulatory unlocks now need the same energy and focus as the funding commitment debate. 

Real deterrence means difficult choices, and a public that understands the importance and the cost of security. That conversation is only beginning in much of Europe. It must include the potential for “gray zone” cyber strikes on hospitals, arson at industrial sites, drones disrupting ports, undersea data cables cut — these have all occurred, but many citizens do not yet recognize this as having malicious intent.

The opportunity in getting it right is significant. McKinsey and GLOBSEC estimates indicate that every euro of spending on European-manufactured equipment generates two euros of revenue across the European supply chain, and an additional €165 billion a year in equipment spending could create up to 1.2 million jobs. The coming years will reveal how effectively Europe is able to scale up to protect its territory and citizens, and how much of the promised investment becomes lasting deterrence and European jobs. Getting there depends on the whole ecosystem — governments, industry and investors — moving together. Increased spending is important. Spending it effectively matters more.

Jonathan Dimson is a senior partner in McKinsey’s London office. Mikael Robertson is a senior partner in the Stockholm office.