European Union Support For Defence Industry Of Ukraine
Comment during joint session of the European Commission and Ukraine Government
Kyiv, 24 February 2025
Our common goal – Peace through Strength in Ukraine:
- Ukraine already demonstrates remarkable outmost strength;
- Additional strength can come from the EU side: both urgent and longer term.
What we can do:
- To increase the support for the Ukraine’s defence industry;
- To set-up a joint EU-Ukraine Task Force on procurement needs of Ukraine;
- To beef-up procurement options from EU and Ukraine defence industries in support of Ukraine;
- To use effectively existing EU defence industrial programs (ASAP, EDIRPA) and forthcoming EDIP for the benefit of Ukraine.
That is how integration of EU and Ukraine’s defence industries will go ahead.
We want EU Defence Innovation Office in Kyiv to take care of this integration. We shall elaborate further opportunities to support defence of Ukraine in the White Paper on the Future of European Defence.
In addition, we agreed that our urgent priority for joint Task Force will be:
- Search for possibilities to improve supply of components and raw materials to Ukraine’s defence industry, including nitrocellulose needed for production of explosives and ammunition;
- Assistance in execution of Ukraine’s defence industry joint projects of development and producing with European defence industry companies;
- Development of EU and Ukraine’s common defence capability targets and flagships.
I hope that in the forthcoming EU-Ukraine defence forum in May we will be able to report on the progress of those activities.
Besides cooperation in defence, we also need to strengthen our cooperation in space, especially in Earth observation services. The Copernicus Programme can be very beneficial for Ukraine.
That is why I suggest to launch a formal process and negotiations of Ukraine joining the European Union Space Programme, Copernicus and its components.
Slava Ukrainy!
