EU mulls funding for weapons

Concerns raised over bloc's ability to provide Ukraine armaments at speed

The European Union's executive body the European Commission is reportedly drawing up plans to allow use of the bloc's budget to pre-finance weapons and ammunition purchases for Ukraine.

The move comes ahead of the first anniversary of the conflict, and the Financial Times reports that the plan was presented to EU foreign ministers earlier this week, with the intention that it will be circulated more widely ahead of a meeting of the 27-member group's defense ministers on March 7.

Speaking at last week's international Munich security conference, EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell warned that with orders and supplies currently taking up to 10 months to be completed, unless urgent action was taken, Ukraine would struggle to keep defending itself.

"We are in urgent war mode," he said. "This shortage of ammunition has to be solved quickly; it is a matter of weeks."

Since March 2021, the EU has had a fund called the European Peace Facility, worth 5 and a half billion euros ($5.8 billion), described by the Council of Europe as "an off — budget instrument aimed at enhancing the EU's ability to prevent conflicts, build peace and strengthen international security, by enabling the financing of operational actions under the Common Foreign and Security Policy that have military or defense implications."

So far it has been used to reimburse individual member states for weapons they have supplied to Ukraine, but concern is growing about Europe's ability to provide the required defensive armaments at the speed that they are required.

"We need a new injection to get the defense industry moving," an unnamed official involved in the proposal told the FT. "The reality has moved beyond the current systems."

Borrell said the conflict was "a classical war" that had been overlooked in recent strategic planning, which had focused on approaches such as technological battles.

"We have taken too much time to make critical decisions such as providing battle tanks," he explained, "when everybody knows that in order to win a classical war, a classical war with manoeuvres of heavy arms, you need battle tanks. You will not win this war without this kind of arms."

The plan would work in a similar way to how Brussels provided upfront payments to pharmaceutical companies for vaccines during the pandemic, with individual member states picking up the final cost later.

Russian forces are reportedly firing a month's worth of European artillery shell manufacturing each day, with Ukraine using around one quarter of that figure, and Jens Stoltenberg, secretary-general of the NATO military alliance, has said European manufacturers are "under strain" trying to meet demand.

Legal complexities relating to what actions the EU can take mean it would not be a straightforward process, hence the delay in public comment, but Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has said agreements on advance purchases would "give the defense industry the possibility to invest in production lines now to be faster and to increase the amount they can deliver".