EU meeting on ammunition shortage: Germany against joint orders

Status: 03/20/2023 05:03

The EU is aware that Ukraine needs a lot more ammunition – but there is disagreement on how it should be procured. The EU’s foreign and defense ministers are now looking for solutions in the “Jumbo Council”.

By Helga Schmidt, ARD Studio Brussels

Before the war against Ukraine, the ministers could probably not have imagined that Europe’s foreign ministers would deal with ammunition, shell sizes and caliber types at one of their monthly meetings. Today, 155mm caliber artillery ammunition is high on their agenda.

There is not enough of it, Ukraine needs supplies so urgently that the ammunition was even a topic in the Federal Chancellor’s government statement last week. Together with the European partners, the federal government will ensure that Ukraine receives enough weapons and equipment, said Olaf Scholz. “It is particularly important to quickly supply Ukraine with the necessary ammunition.”

Camps were not full even before the war

But the stocks are empty, not only in the Bundeswehr. Almost all EU countries have the problem, because a lot of ammunition was already delivered to Ukraine, but also because there wasn’t much before the war.

A land war with artillery, such as Russia is now waging against Ukraine, seemed to be a thing of the past. That’s why ammunition production was scaled back everywhere – including the 155 millimeter NATO standard ammunition that is now used, for example, in the delivered howitzers.

In the devastating battle for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut alone, so many grenades were fired that the Ukrainian Defense Minister, Oleksiy Reznikov, was like a mantra, asking for more supplies. “The number one priority,” Reznikov told EU defense ministers in Stockholm two weeks ago, “is air defense and ammunition, ammunition and more ammunition.”

EU countries should check their camps

Europe’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell proposes giving one billion euros to the countries that give even more of their own ammunition stocks to Ukraine. They could then use the money to buy new ones. The scouring of stocks should be rewarded with a refund of 50 to 60 percent.

A proposal that the EU governments think makes sense, and Federal Defense Minister Boris Pistorius is also campaigning for it. “At the moment, the main thing is to collect stocks and deliver whatever we can,” he said in Stockholm after the talks with the Ukrainian colleague.

However, for Pistorius there are also limits to the fee. You will deliver what “we can deliver in view of our own defense and alliance capabilities”. The message: Germany supports Ukraine, but will always have to keep an eye on the defense obligations in the NATO alliance area.

Order centrally or individually?

Especially since it is not enough to quickly place orders when purchasing new ones. The armaments industry in Europe is currently producing less ammunition than Ukraine burns. “Just because we all order more, there aren’t any more,” says Pistorius. “It has to be produced before it can be delivered.”

Opinions differ as to how. The EU Commission in Brussels wants the EU countries to bundle their orders, which should then be passed on to the armaments companies centrally in Brussels. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen envisages a procedure similar to that used to order vaccines in the corona pandemic.

However, several countries, including Germany, prefer to order nationally as before. Berlin refers to existing framework agreements with the armaments companies. They could be used and expanded – overall, according to German estimates, this would be faster than the untested new ordering process via Brussels.

Industry should get a purchase guarantee

It is relatively undisputed that the armaments industry should be given incentives to ramp up production. The companies should be able to rely on acceptance. Another billion is to be made available for this purpose. The total of two billion euros for the ammunition come from a special EU pot, the so-called peace facility.

Iran and Tunisia are also on the agenda

Ammunition is being discussed today in the so-called Jumbo Council: the 27 EU foreign ministers are joined by the 27 defense ministers of the member countries. A huge lap that shows how great the time pressure is. You want to act faster than before.

There are two more difficult issues for the foreign ministers: the question of how Europe should deal with the mullahs’ regime in Iran, which continues to deal brutally with the protesters, and the question of how to influence the crisis in Tunisia.

EU foreign and defense ministers meeting: Germany against joint armament order

Helga Schmidt, ARD Brussels, March 19, 2023 11:40 p.m

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