EU member states have yet to agree on the legal details of the joint ammunition procurement deal they closed last month in order to supply Ukraine, Euractiv reported. In particular, concerns were raised over who would get the procurement contracts, worth €1 billion in total.
Last month, the EU Council agreed on the European Commission’s “three-track plan” to keep supplying Ukraine with enough ammunition to hold off the Russian advance. The first part of the plan consists of member states donating weaponry from their own stocks while being reimbursed through the European Peace Facility (EPF), up to a total of €1 billion. In the first two weeks, this mechanism already received much criticism after some EU members took advantage of the loose rules to have others pay for their modernization projects.
However, the current problem is with the second track, which consists of the joint procurement of a million 155mm artillery rounds (and missiles, if requested) for another €1 billion, all planned to be manufactured by the end of September. The EU ambassadors met on Wednesday, April 5th, to discuss the details of the plan, but could not reach an agreement on certain definitions in the text that were meant to restrict where and to whom the contracts could be given.
The original proposal submitted by the European Commission specified that the procurement contracts only go to “economic operators established in the EU and Norway,” which was later re-defined as the slightly more vague “European defense industry.” While this phrasing was accepted by all member states, now France and a few other countries seek more legal restrictions to make sure that the money stays within EU borders.
However, concerns have been raised over the EU’s own weapons production capabilities, as some fear the domestic defense industry lacks the capacity to deliver in time.
The EU members are expected to finalize the deal in the next two weeks, before the foreign ministers’ meeting in Luxembourg, organized to discuss further Ukraine support. However, before signing off on the plan, member states will want to see the Commission’s own assessment of the domestic production capabilities as well as the manufacturing plan that is expected to be proposed later this month.
