Check against delivery! 

Good morning, 

Today is the [Foreign Affairs] Defence Council and the Steering Board of the European Defence Agency (EDA).  

The European Defence Agency is becoming more and more important. Today, we are going to study a very important document, which is the analysis of the Capability Development Plan of our military capacities. Which are the priorities of our armies? What do we need and we do not have, identifying army by army where are the loopholes and where we should invest?  

This is a paper - a document - done together with all European armies and intelligence services, which has been produced for years but nobody was paying a lot of attention to that. Today, yes. Today, everybody looks at that. 

We will present to the ministers of defence where are our weak points in our defence capacities and how we can solve it by investing more in the priority areas.  

Then, certainly, we will have a look at our support to Ukraine, from many points of view: from the point of view of training, from the point of view of providing ammunition, and we will review where we are and how can we increase [our support]. The figure [of military support] is already €27 billion. By the end of the month, my team will go to Ukraine, and present our proposal for the long-term commitments to ensure security for Ukraine that has to be approved by the European Council by the end of the year.  

We will have a breakfast with the Secretary-General of NATO [Jens Stoltenberg]. You know that there have been accidents, incidents - whatever you want to call them – in the North Sea. Cables broken by ships - accidents or not - affecting gas pipelines, affecting optic fiber cables. 

It shows that our critical infrastructure is vulnerable, and we have to increase our capacity to protect them. 

This is going to be the meeting today – a very technical one because we will discuss which are the capacities of our armies. We will distribute the document. The Capability Development Plan will be distributed and presented to you. Please, there is a lot of information there about the state of the art of European defence. 

Thank you. 

Q&A 

Q. And the 1 million artillery shells, do you have new numbers now? 

This is what we are going to [put to] scrutiny, closely, where the Member States are. I do not have ammunition here in Brussels. I do not have a stock of ammunitions; I have to mobilise the stocks of the European armies.  

The first track - providing what the armies already had in their stockpiles - is already finished. This first track is already done, and on that track, we were where we supposed we could be - more than 300,000 shells. Now, from the stockpiles of the armies, it is difficult to get more.  

Now, it is the production. Production depends on the contracts, and the contracts depend on the grouping and the financial availability of the Member States. So, it is an interaction between the industry and the Member States. Work is in progress, but we would like to know today where we are and what can be the rhythm of production for this second track.

Keep in mind that the European defence industry is exporting a lot. About 40% of the production is being exported to third countries so, it is not a lack of production capacities. It is that they send their products to another market. So, maybe what we have to do is to try to shift this production to the priority [number] one which is the Ukrainians, but let’s see. 

Q. That would be quite a change. Is there political support for that? 

The companies are in the market, and they produce for the market. So, it is a matter of providing another market, which could be more interesting for them. This dialogue, between the political branch and the industrial branch, together with my colleague Breton [Commissioner for Internal Market] we will see what we can do. I cannot tell you where we are, I will have to tell you after [the meeting].  

Q. Yesterday, you were talking about the Israel-Hamas war. Today also, you are going to talk about the Israel-Hamas war, or no? 

I think that it was enough yesterday. 

Link to the video: https://audiovisual.ec.europa.eu/en/video/I-249276