France backtracks on EU-only ammo for Ukraine

PARIS — Growing worries that the EU will fall short of its pledge to supply a million artillery shells to Ukraine by March is forcing France to do an about-face on its earlier insistence that the ammunition should only be sourced in Europe.

However, before resorting to foreign suppliers, the EU needs to actually miss the March target, a senior French diplomat told POLITICO.

“As long as we haven’t come to that conclusion, we won’t do it [buy abroad], but if we have to adjust, we’ll adjust,” they said.

That’s a significant shift from France’s traditional position of encouraging national governments to buy European arms and ammunition. 

“We need European preference, because if we don’t encourage companies [to produce], we won’t get out of the cycle. But we know how to be flexible to help Ukraine,” the senior diplomat said.

So far the bloc is well short of the million shell mark, sending Ukraine only about a third of that amount.

Earlier this month, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said the target wouldn’t be met and that it was too ambitious to begin with. 

But close is still pretty good, says the EU’s diplomatic service.

Speaking at a POLITICO event on Tuesday, Benedikta von Seherr-Thoß, the European External Action Service’s managing director for peace, security and defense, said that the March deadline is still a long time away. And even if the goal isn’t met by that month, Kyiv will eventually get the promised ammunition, she said.

“The question is will we meet the target by March, or sometime later in 2024?” she said.

The need to send vast amounts of ammunition to Ukraine is putting a huge strain on European stockpiles and shell production — designed for war plans that didn’t take into account the massive artillery battles that are a hallmark of combat in Ukraine.

Earlier this year, Brussels came up with a plan to boost ammunition shipments to Ukraine by sending shells from existing stockpiles and reimbursing countries from the EU’s European Peace Facility, as well as a €1 billion plan for the joint procurement of ammunition by the European Defence Agency.

However, the shell effort ran into domestic concerns, as Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton, together with Germany and France, wouldn’t agree to include ammunition produced outside the EU.

Now, calls for Europe to look abroad for shells to deliver to Kyiv are growing louder. 

“We have advocated for a long time that if there is not enough ammunition, or there is not enough equipment in the EU, then let’s buy it somewhere else and give it to Ukraine,” ​​Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs told POLITICO earlier this month.  

An EU diplomat from a third country — granted, like others in this piece, anonymity to speak freely — underlined that the priority is ensuring Ukraine has enough shells to fend off Russian attacks, not to protect European industries.

“The end game of this is to give Ukraine what they need. For Ukraine, it doesn’t really matter [if weapons come from foreign suppliers] … So that could absolutely be a question for the future,” the diplomat said.