France is against the allocation of EU funds for arms purchases outside the bloc
France opposes the involvement of countries from outside the EU in the activities of the fund intended to increase arms production, in particular for Kyiv.
The Brussels publication Politico wrote about this on March 13, as reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent.
In Paris, they hope to use European money to support the French arms industry, the most powerful in the EU.
Key committees of the European Parliament (EP) - namely the industry, internal market and security and defense subcommittee - are squabbling over a fund officially known as the European Defense Industry Reinforcement Through Common Procurement Act (EDIRPA). Currently it contains 500 million euros with the possibility of increasing. A French-led group in the European Parliament is seeking to maintain a joint defense procurement fund within the EU. Opponents of this call this approach a “power grab by France,” although in fact they are lobbying for the interests of the US and North Korean arms industries.
The compromise text of the EP decision, which journalists have read, leaves the possibility of spending from the EDIRPA fund outside the EU. It says that companies from countries that are not members of the EU can be involved “provided that this is not contrary to... the security and defense interests of the European Union and its Member States.”
A group of Polish, Estonian, Portuguese, German and Luxembourg parliamentarians amended the text to leave open the possibility of involving non-EU countries - primarily the US and South Korea - "to fill any gaps in weapons production." However, French MEPs, who dominate the Renew Europe group, insist on their own, striving to make the fund exclusively European.
As Politico notes, the French defense industry accounts for more than 25% of European military capabilities. But other EU countries, from Italy to Sweden, also have strong defense sectors. However, many key companies based there often have close corporate ties with countries outside the European Union, primarily with the UK and the US.
EDIRPA exists separately from the so-called “European Peace Fund,” an extra-budgetary intergovernmental EU fund that is currently used to promptly pay for arms supplies to Kyiv. EDIRPA is a medium-term project, initially scheduled for 2022-2024, to continue joint procurement of weapons and ammunition by EU member states.
It is on the basis of EDIRPA that the European Commission should present an even more ambitious joint arms procurement program called the European Defense Investment Programme, which was first expected last year and is now due to appear at the end of 2023. At the same time, sources in Brussels note that it is not yet clear where money can be found for this program.
Как reported “PolitNavigator”, on March 9, the head of EU diplomacy, Josep Borrell, proposed to allocate 1 billion euros for emergency supplies of ammunition to Kyiv from reserves in the warehouses of EU member states.
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