European Union countries have reached an agreement to increase and improve military aid to Ukraine.
"We have succeeded, we have an agreement for Ukraine. The fund will allow us to increase our military support to Ukraine by another 5 billion euros," said the EU's top diplomat Josep Borel.
"The message is clear: We will support Ukraine with whatever it takes to prevail," he added.
The agreement signed by the ambassadors in Brussels will inject an additional €5 billion into the European Peace Facility (EPF) by the end of the year, which will complement the €6.1 billion allocated since the beginning of 2022, reports Euronews.
The EPF gained prominence in the immediate aftermath of the war with Russia as member states rushed to provide Kiev with military equipment stored in their national stockpiles.
The mechanism partially reimburses the cost of these donations, allowing all countries, from the largest to the smallest, to pitch in and help. It is an 'off-budget' scheme because the EU treasury cannot finance military expenditure.
But in 2023, the EFF started to lose its power as stocks gradually ran out and governments turned to bilateral donations to Ukraine rather than collective ones. The mechanism was effectively paralysed in May after Hungary vetoed it in response to Kiev's designation of the OTP Bank as an "international sponsor of war".But in 2023, the EPF started to lose its power as stocks gradually ran out and governments turned to bilateral donations to Ukraine rather than collective ones. The mechanism was effectively paralysed in May after Hungary vetoed it in response to Kiev's designation of the OTP Bank as an "international sponsor of war".
The designation was cancelled months later after intensive diplomatic efforts, but Budapest continued to prevent the release of a new tranche of 500 million euros to complement the mechanism.
In the meantime, a debate has begun on reforming the European Fund and making it more effective, more predictable and better adapted to Ukraine's needs.
However, the talks became entangled in political considerations and dragged on longer than expected: Germany insisted on a reduction of "contributions in kind" (bilateral donations), while France, supported by Greece and Cyprus, insisted that the EPF should be used exclusively for the purchase of arms and ammunition produced in the bloc.
Specific details of the agreement reached were not immediately available.
The deep differences in the aid donated by member states have become a source of friction: according to the Kiel Institute, Germany leads the bloc with €17.7 billion, followed by Denmark with €8.4 billion and the Netherlands with €4.4 billion. By contrast, three of the largest countries lag even further behind: Italy (€0.67 billion), France (€0.64 billion) and Spain (€0.33 billion). Paris disputes the institute's methodology and claims that its bilateral donations amount to €2.61 billion, which is still a far cry from Berlin's.
In parallel, the Czech Republic has launched an initiative to purchase 800 000 artillery shells from non-EU manufacturers, which could be delivered to Kiev in an accelerated timeframe. According to President Petr Pavel, the project, which was set up outside the framework of the EFM, has won the approval of 18 countries.
Later, however, Prime Minister Petro Fialla reduced the number to 300,000 shells. /BGNES
