Herald Ruijters, Deputy Director-General of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Defence Industry and Space, announced on Wednesday 6 May that the first funds linked to the ‘defence’ pillar of the loan to Ukraine - €6 billion - should be disbursed by the end of May/beginning of June.
“We are still going through a number of administrative steps such as the signature of the loan agreement with Ukraine and setting up the special dedicated account. And these all will allow that the money will start flowing in the beginning of end of May, beginning of June”, he announced at a hearing of the European Parliament’s Committee on Security and Defence.
The first funds disbursed will be earmarked for drones and anti-drone systems. “There is still an amount, which is more than about 22 billion left (for 2026) which we now will have to put into place as quickly as possible”, added Mr Ruijters.
He pointed out that a second programme devoted to drones and anti-drones, worth more than €6 billion, would certainly be necessary, “particularly as Ukraine is also developing, for instance, things like deep-strike drones, et cetera”. Ammunition should also be supported, as should missiles, deep-strike missiles and air defence. According to Mr Ruijters, Ukraine should submit its requests for this equipment to the Commission and the Member States “during the month of May”.
The loan regulation gives priority to the acquisition of equipment from the Ukrainian and EU defence industries, with possible derogations for third countries. For example, “the first product schedule on drones and counter drones, everybody was agreeing that the delivery thereof could only be done through the Ukrainian industrial base. There was simply not the capacity of production within the EU. The second one on drones and counter-drones, there could be capacities in the EU meanwhile”, explained the Commission representative. As there are quite a number of components which do not come out of Ukraine, but which Ukraine buys from third countries - including China - the Europeans even needed to vote on the derogation within the first schedule.
Mr Ruijters acknowledged that on other schedules, in particular air defence, the debate between the Member States on a derogation would have to be “more intense”. “Within Europe, and we have a lot of products in all the different ranges of air defence, short range, mid-range, long-range. We need to be very careful together with our Ukrainian counterparts that we put together a product schedule that would reply to the ambition of this regulation to jointly develop the Ukrainian and EU defence basis and only in the exception go outside”, he reminded us. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)