By Andrew Gray
BRUSSELS — The European Union’s foreign policy chief on Thursday sought the backing of foreign ministers for a plan to spend up to 20 billion euros ($22.4 billion) on weapons, ammunition and other military aid for Ukraine over four years, officials said.
Josep Borrell’s proposal is part of an effort to put European support for Kyiv on a longer-term footing, after more than a year of scrambling to respond to Ukraine’s immediate needs following Russia’s invasion.
The proposal comes amid an international drive to give Ukraine long-term security assurances, as announced by members of the G7 on the sidelines of last week’s NATO summit in Vilnius.
“We’ll discuss how to continue supporting Ukraine in the long run,” Borrell said on arrival at the meeting in Brussels.
“I presented a plan in order to ensure financial support for Ukraine in the next years, which will amount to quite an important amount of money. I hope the ministers will support it,” he told reporters.
Borrell declined to provide figures. But diplomats and officials said his proposal – first reported by Politico – would add up to 5 billion euros a year for Ukraine into the EU-run European Peace Facility (EPF).
The Peace Facility has already allocated more than 5 billion euros in support for Ukraine since February last year. The extra funding would cover 2024-27.
The facility is used to reimburse EU countries for at least part of the cost of weapons, ammunition and other military aid that they give to nations outside the bloc.
Borrell raised the prospect of a new cash pot for Kyiv last month and said it could be called the Ukraine Defense Fund.
LANDMARK MOVE
The EU’s decision last year to bankroll arms supplies to a country at war was a landmark moment for the 27-member bloc, which for decades concentrated on economic and political cooperation and avoided involvement in armed conflicts.
But discussions on the new proposal are unlikely to be straightforward.
Hungary is holding up the disbursement of 500 million euros in current EPF funds for Ukraine aid, demanding that Hungarian bank OTP first be removed from a Ukrainian blacklist.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said Budapest would take the same stance with the new proposal.
“Neither for the 500 million blocked so far, nor for the 20 billion now proposed, are we willing to engage in any kind of negotiations as long as OTP is on this list,” he said at a news conference.
Borrell’s proposal is among several items on the agenda of Thursday’s meeting of foreign ministers, whose governments would have to provide the money.
Diplomats said they expect EU governments to consider the plan alongside a proposal from the European Commission to provide 50 billion euros in economic aid to Ukraine over the same four-year period.
“It’s not enough to simply put sums of money on the table,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told reporters. “It has to be logically and sensibly interlinked and that’s what we’re talking about today.”
Ministers are expected to have only an initial discussion on Thursday and then return to the issue in more depth at a meeting in Spain at the end of August, officials and diplomats said. – Reuters
