EU Pledges €500 Million to Boost Ammunition Output in Europe

  • Bloc’s executive announces measures to aid manufacturing
  • Measures add to separate plans to spend €2 billion on shells
Ammunition shells for French Caesar artillery guns used by the Ukrainian armed forces, in a factory in France.Photographer: Lioinel Bonaventure/AFP/Getty Images
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The European Union is setting aside €500 million ($551 million) to boost manufacturing of artillery shells, missiles and gunpowder in an effort to speed up production of ammunition for Ukraine and galvanize the bloc’s defense industry.

Among a raft of measures, the European Commission proposed the funds to co-finance projects alongside EU governments. It offered around half of the funding for companies to ramp up output capacity or refit old stocks of ammunition to make them operational again.