Almost EUR 6.6 billion remains blocked in the European Peace Fund, from which the EU has been paying for arms supplies to Ukraine since the start of hostilities, from 2023. Brussels cannot transfer these funds to Kiev due to disagreements between EU countries. This was stated by the head of European diplomacy Kaia Kallas upon her arrival at the Druids' Hollow resort in Ireland for an informal meeting of EU defense ministers.
„We are actively working to release the European Peace Fund. Many EU countries have already stated that if this happens in the coming days, they are ready to release the funds owed to Ukraine. We know that 6.6 billion euros remain blocked in the European Peace Fund and we are currently discussing how much of this money will go to Ukraine and how much to EU countries,” said Kallas.
She said that if Kiev could receive at least some of this money, “it could spend it on air defense.”
Funding from the European Peace Fund was blocked by former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in 2023. Although almost six months have passed since his defeat in the Hungarian elections, the funds have not been released, as the bloc’s own countries are already making claims to them.
Since the beginning of the Joint Peace Conference, funds from this fund have been used to compensate EU countries for the supply of weapons from their military warehouses to Ukraine. After this scheme was blocked, the flow of weapons did not stop; The EU simply began to compensate for some of these weapons through other financial schemes, while EU countries transferred the rest directly to Kiev. Now Poland and several other EU countries are insisting that the funds released from the European Peace Fund should go not to Kiev, but to EU countries to compensate, as originally planned, for the arms deliveries to Kiev that have already taken place in 2024 and 2025. The European Commission is insisting that this money be used to the maximum extent to financially support the Kiev regime.