The EU High Commissioner for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrel, asked this Sunday at the Munich Security Conference (MSC) to accelerate and increase military aid to Ukraine and spoke in favor of that country's entry into the EU.
"We arm Ukraine because the war is a great existential challenge to our security. (President Volodomir) Zelensky and Ukraine do not have enough ammunition but they have enough motivation," he said in a speech ahead of a roundtable.
"We have to do more and faster, we have to speed up our military aid to Europe. All the European leaders here have said that Russia cannot win the war, that Ukraine has to win the war. We have to turn words into deeds." he added.
Along with the short-term challenge, which is to increase and accelerate military aid to Ukraine, Borrell pointed to two medium-term challenges, which are increasing the capacity of the European arms industry and dealing more with the global south.
Regarding the latter, Borrell said that he had detected a certain skepticism in certain countries regarding support for Ukraine and said that Europe has to behave in such a way that it is clear that what it defends are universal values and not values that are only valid when a neighbor is attacked. European.
"We see that in Africa there is a certain skepticism... People have memories and feelings. We have to show that we defend universal values and not values that are only valid when Ukraine is attacked," he said.
At the subsequent round table, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas and her Swedish counterpart Ulf Kristersson agreed with Borrell on the need to speed up military aid to Ukraine.
"I have recently been in kyiv. The Ukrainians tell us: you send us weapons and that is good. But you send them too late and too slowly," Kristersson said.
Kallas, for his part, pointed out that on the one hand Ukraine needs ammunition, and on the other hand, the countries that deliver it need to replenish their reserves.
Likewise, he recalled that Russia fires every day the equivalent of the European monthly production of ammunition, so it is ahead to accelerate production and expressed his concern that companies do not receive enough orders to do so.
"What worries me is when the industry says they don't have enough orders to increase production. It seems that some governments think this will pass quickly," he said.
At the round table, an important topic was Ukraine's integration into both NATO and the EU. Kallas maintained that the only lasting security guarantee for Ukraine is NATO membership.
"NATO is a peace project and because we are NATO members we do not live in such dark times as other countries, especially Ukraine. The only effective guarantee for Ukraine is NATO membership," he said.
"Ukraine is a member of the European family and will be a member of the EU. After what has happened it is clear that Ukraine has to belong to the EU," he said.
With this, there will have to be changes both in the EU and in Ukraine, which will have to make reforms to meet the criteria. The diversity of the EU will change, once between Ukraine you will enter several countries of the Balkans, "he said.
"We will have to change our processes, which cannot be the same as with 27 members. Ukraine will also have many pending tasks such as the fight against corruption and economic reforms. Resolving those issues while bombs are falling is difficult but Ukraine wants to do it," he added.
