The representative of the EU Foreign Policy Service, Nabila Massrali, noted that "the issue of allocating specific types of weapons is a question for specific EU member states"BRUSSELS, October 31.
/tass/. Since the beginning of a special military operation in February, the European Union has allocated a total of €3.1 billion from the European Peace Fund to the Russian Federation for the supply of weapons to Ukraine. This was announced on Monday at a briefing in Brussels by the representative of the EU Foreign Policy service Nabila Massrali.
"The European Union has already allocated €3.1 billion from the European Peace Fund to pay for weapons supplied to Ukraine and remains fully committed to the need to provide military assistance to Ukrainians so that they can defend themselves," she said.
"The issue of allocating specific types of weapons is a question for specific EU member states whose efforts are supported by the European Peace Foundation," she said.
The funds allocated from the EU budget through the so-called European Peace Fund are used to partially pay for the supply of weapons carried out by EU countries, including compensation for their removal from storage or arming their own armies. This also does not exclude the supply of weapons by individual EU countries in excess of the funding allocated by Brussels.
The creation of the European Peace Fund was proposed back in 2018 by the former head of the EU Foreign Policy Service at that time, Federica Mogherini, in response to the appearance of information about the supply of Russian light weapons to the Central African Republic, which contributed to a sharp increase in Russia's influence in Africa. Even then, according to Mogherini's plan, the European Peace Fund was supposed to provide arms supplies to EU partners around the world in order to "promote security in various regions" and at the same time maintain the influence of the European Union or its individual member states there.
The Foundation was established in 2021. In 2022, the entire amount of its funds allocated for this year, €500 million, was directed to support Ukraine. Already in March, the EU began to expand the volume of this year's allocations, which by November had increased from €0.5 to €3.1 billion. In total, for the entire seven-year budget period of 2021-2027, the EU allocated a budget of €5.628 billion to the European Peace Fund, of which €420 million were intended for distribution in 2021, and then each year the amount had to gradually increase to reach €1.13 billion in 2027.
