The 27 EU member states on Wednesday reached an agreement to add 5 billion euros to a fund intended to finance the purchase of weapons for Ukraine, an official source told AFP.
“Agreement,” announced the Belgian presidency of the EU Council X. “EU ambassadors agreed in principle to reform the European Peace Fund (EPF) to support Ukraine with a budget of 5 billion euros for 2024,” it added.
The EU has already spent more than six billion euros within the framework of the European Peace Fund, which is mainly aimed at reimbursing arms supplies to Ukraine from individual member states.
The decision, announced on Wednesday, came after weeks of negotiations, despite opposition from France and Germany.
Paris wanted guarantees that weapons financed by European funds would be “made in Europe”, and Germany expressed its reservations about this European mechanism, preferring bilateral aid.
Berlin is the largest donor of this fund
According to diplomats, Germany made sure that its direct contribution to Ukraine – it promised eight billion euros this year – was partially deducted from its financial support of the European aid fund to Kyiv. Berlin is the largest donor to this fund, whose budget is filled by member states according to their gross domestic product (GDP).
For its part, according to the same source, France has ensured that “priority” is given to the European defense industry when a member state places an order for weapons, unless it proves too difficult to get them within a reasonable time frame.
In total, the EU and its member states have already spent about 28 billion euros on military aid to Ukraine since Russia invaded the country on February 24, 2022.
French President Emmanuel Macron will travel to Berlin on Friday to meet with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to try to ease tensions between them over Ukraine that have surfaced in recent weeks, senior German and French officials told Politico. .ro.
They will be joined later in the day by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, according to a German official, marking the first meeting since Tusk’s return as Polish prime minister in December of the “Weimar Triangle,” a format of dialogue between the three countries created in 1991.
Source: Hot News
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