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The European Commission announced its intention to urgently provide 500 million euros for the EU defense industry. It is clarified that the funds are provided for ammunition manufacturers. The EU countries are experiencing a shortage of shells in connection with the supply of their stocks to Ukraine. The measures taken should lead to the replenishment of warehouses in the EU and meet the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) for protection against Russian aggression, FREEDOM reports.
Manufacture 1 million shells in 12 months – in order to realize this unprecedented task for itself, the EU is going to provide an additional 500 million euros in subsidies to companies to increase the rate of production of ammunition and missiles. The European Commission expects that the MEPs will consider this issue and adopt the proposal by the summer.
“Today, European industry is not large enough to meet the security needs of Ukraine and our member states. But she has the potential to do so. When it comes to defense, our industry must move to a war economy regime. We can and must revitalize it to adapt to the needs of a high-intensity conflict,” said EU Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton in a comment to Euractiv.
The defense subsidy scheme is the third part of the EU’s effort to transfer more ammunition and weapons to Ukraine, as well as replenish its own partially depleted stocks. As part of this project, the EU has already agreed to allocate 1 billion euros to compensate countries that supplied ammunition from their own warehouses. And another 1 billion for new purchases.
“The problem is, firstly, that the countries of the European Union, separately France and Poland, cannot agree among themselves on how to start the process correctly. And this may again have a negative impact on the process and dynamics of the supply of weapons and ammunition to Ukraine. And, secondly, how to coordinate this activity in order to make it more and more efficient? Here, again, there are issues that Europe does not quite understand for itself, how to solve them quickly and efficiently,” commented Gennadiy Maksak, Executive Director of the Ukrainian Prism Foreign Policy Council.
The inability of the European Union to implement its own decisions on the purchase of ammunition is stupefied. This is how the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmitry Kuleba commented on the disputes in Europe over contracts for the production of shells.
“This is a test of whether the EU has strategic autonomy in making important new security decisions. And for Ukraine, the cost of inaction is measured in human lives,” he wrote on Twitter.
At the same time, according to the expert, the unhurried European bureaucracy still demonstrates unusual pace of decision-making. The EU understands that the issue is urgent, and delay can play a decisive role not only in resolving Russia’s war against Ukraine, but also in ensuring their own security.
“Here, let’s just say, there are only plans that are being outlined, there are no serious steps so far that would indicate that, yes, indeed, there is a complete turn to military footing. And the fact that the European Union is already ready to launch the industry and make plans and a queue for who will buy, what products, what military platforms, and so on, then again, there is still something to work on,” notes Maksak.
According to analysts, the actions of the European Commission will encourage ammunition manufacturers to give priority to deliveries to Ukraine over other contracts. However, in order to motivate companies to significantly increase production capacity, they need to be reassured that demand and financing are a long-term prospect.
