European Union member states on Thursday adopted the seventh batch of 500 million in the joint fund to send arms to Ukraine, bringing to 3.6 billion euros the funding to cover the supply of military equipment to Kiev in the midst of the Russian war of aggression, plus a demining program valued at 25 million.
Agreed a few weeks ago by EU foreign ministers, this is the seventh item adopted through the European Peace Facility and comes hand in hand with 45 million euros in support of assistance to the European Union’s training mission for the Ukrainian army.
In the words of the EU High Representative for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, this step, which coincides with the visit of some fifteen European commissioners to Kiev to discuss progress on EU accession face to face with the Ukrainian government, sends a «clear message at a crucial moment». «We will continue to support Ukraine for as long as necessary,» he said.
The head of European diplomacy has insisted that Ukraine should get all necessary military equipment and training to defend its territory and people from Russia’s war of aggression, as Ukraine defends «common values and basic principles of international law».
In this sense it is also understood the allocation of 45 million euros agreed a few weeks ago by the European foreign ministers to provide more material and resources to the operation, in which more than 20 Member States participate and which has its main bases in Germany and Poland but is coordinated directly from the EU military commanders in Brussels.
Likewise, within the framework of the visit of the European Commission to Ukraine, a demining program valued at 25 million euros has been announced, which seems to be key for security in the country and the advance of Ukrainian troops on the Donbas front.
«Ukraine will be one of the countries with more mines in the world, thousands of mines have been scattered in the outskirts of the city and rural areas,» said the former Spanish minister in statements to the press prior to the trip, to insist on a «rapid» and «powerful» demining mission of the EU.
«On the future of the European Peace Facility, the High Representative acknowledged that the fund has a limit and that the Member States, which make contributions proportional to their economic weight in the EU, should «rethink» and «recast» the Facility, originally designed to support the work of third country armies and to finance armed forces collaborating with the EU, but which in the context of the war has become the key instrument to jointly help Kiev in the face of the Russian invasion.
At the end of 2022, the EU-27 agreed on an allocation of 2 billion euros to replenish the European Peace Facility, having exhausted almost the entire fund by supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia.
The agreement meant extending the ceiling of this extra-budgetary instrument, which relies on contributions from member states, by 2 billion by 2023, with the possibility of reaching up to 5.5 billion by the end of 2027. This is doubling the initial budget of the mechanism created in 2020 to finance EU military policy.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
