EU might not meet delivery target of one million shells for Ukraine, Borrell says

Europe’s defence industry must speed up production for the bloc to meet its target of providing one million ammunition rounds to Ukraine by March, the EU’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell said on Monday (13 November).

Since April, European countries have supplied Ukraine with “300,000 shells from their existing stocks”, Borrell told reporters, as the one-year finish line to fulfil the commitment to send Kyiv one million rounds nears.

“Now we’ve gone onto the production [of ammunition], the lines have started working,” Borrell said, but did admit that the bloc might “not reach [the target] by the end of the year”.

EU member states committed to sending one million rounds of ammunition to Kyiv by the end of March 2024 in a bid to help Ukraine fight the Russian armed forces, which fire 10 times the volume of rounds as the Ukrainians.

Under the three-track ammunition plan, EU member states could benefit from the European Peace Facility (EPF) fund to dig into their own stocks (‘Track one’) and secure joint procurement deals with the industry to purchase ammunition (‘Track two’).

The third track, known as the Act in Support of Ammunition Production (ASAP), is a fund to help EU defence companies ramp up production.

However, resistance from the EU industry to re-orient their production lines to supply Ukraine rather than their original customers and invest in additional production capacity for a short-term ramp-up has caused concerns among EU diplomats and senior officials that the one-million target won’t be met.

“It will depend on how quickly the contracts will be implemented and the factories will produce,” he said. “The goal is to increase capacity.”

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“Part of what is produced is exported – one solution would be to redirect the exports to Ukraine,” the chief diplomat said, calling on companies to suspend contracts with their clients to favour those passed for Ukraine.

“We see that production has accelerated, but constraints for production are everywhere,” one EU official said ahead of Monday’s meeting.

“When we want to produce more, we need more machines, and train personnel, which takes time, there is a question of finding powder and explosives which are rare in Europe,” they also said.

EU defence ministers are to meet in Brussels on Tuesday (14 November) to discuss the shortfall.

They are expected to call on banks to grant the defence industry access to loans, in a bid to remove hurdles for greater investment into production capacities.

Despite the struggle, there is no revision of the deadline. Borrell said that the EU “continue[s] having this target”.

The one-year-deadline was pushed by Estonia at the time of the negotiations on the deal, as a way to keep the EU countries accountable and pressure the industry to step up its production capacity. Other countries were reluctant to impose an end date, as it would look like a failure if they didn’t meet the requirements. 

“We have gone far but not enough, and I would like for this to go faster,” Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas told RFI in an interview last month, pointing to the issue.

[Edited by Alexandra Brzozowski/Nathalie Weatherald]

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