€500 million and new measures to urgently boost EU defence industry capacities in ammunition production

Today, the Commission has adopted the Act in Support of Ammunition Production (ASAP) as a response to track 3 of the plan agreed by the Council on 20 March, to urgently deliver ammunition and missiles to Ukraine and to help Member States refill their stocks. By introducing targeted measures including financing, the Act aims at ramping up the EU's production capacity and addressing the current shortage of ammunition and missiles as well as their components. It will support the destocking from Member States (track 1) and the joint procurement for ammunition (track 2).

In particular, it will strengthen the responsiveness and ability of the Union defence industry to ensure the timely supply of ammunition and missiles in Europe. In light of the return of high intensity conflict in Europe, the timely availability in sufficient volumes of these products is critical for our security and for our continuous efforts to support Ukraine. This proposal for a new Regulation comprises:

An instrument to financially support the reinforcement of the Union's industrial production capacities for the relevant defence products;
A mechanism to map, monitor and better anticipate the existence of bottlenecks in these supply chains;
The introduction of a temporary regulatory framework to address the ammunition supply shortage.

The Commission proposes to allocate a budget of €500 million in current prices. This budget comes from the redeployment of different instruments, in particular the European Defence Fund and the future EDIRPA.

President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said: ”Ukraine is heroically resisting the brutal Russian invader. We stand by our promise to support Ukraine and its people, for as long as it takes. But Ukraine's brave soldiers need sufficient military equipment to defend their country. Europe is stepping up its support on three tracks. First, Member States are delivering additional ammunition from their existing stocks, with new European Peace Facility support of 1 billion euros. Second, together with Member States, we will procure jointly more ammunition for Ukraine - and we are making available an additional billion euro for that. And today, we are delivering on the third track. Ramping up and speeding up the defence industrial production of ammunition in Europe.

This will help supply more ammunition for Ukraine to defend its citizens and it will also strengthen our European defence capabilities. Together with the Member States, we will mobilise a further 1 billion euro to ramp up capacities across Europe. This is a critical part of Europe‘s strategic capacity to defend its interests and values, and help maintain peace on our continent.” /BGNES