EU member states on Wednesday agreed to add five billion euros ($5.5 billion) to a fund to acquire weapons sent to Ukraine, officials said.
Belgium, which is currently holding the EU’s rotating presidency, said ambassadors from the bloc had agreed “in principle” on the plan to aid arms supplies to Kyiv in 2024 with the European Peace Facility (EPF) fund.
According to Reuters, a compromise was reached between France’s “buy European” policy for arms eligible for funds and Germany’s demand that bilateral aid take into account the size of countries’ contributions.
The compromise permits the fund to be used to aid in financing a Czech initiative to buy hundreds of thousands of artillery shells from countries outside Europe.
The EPF has already been used to allocate about 6.1 billion euros to military aid for Ukraine, the EU said.
The head of EU foreign policy, Josep Borrell, proposed last year to create a new fund specifically for Kyiv, the Ukraine Assistance Fund, inside the EPF. It would contain a budget of up to 5 billion euros per year for the next four years.
