Seyma Erkul Dayanc<\/p>\n
12 May 2026\u2022Update: 12 May 2026<\/p>\n
The EU foreign policy chief on Tuesday urged faster European defense production as EU defense ministers met in Brussels for talks covering Ukraine, industrial capacity and Middle East security issues.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are focusing on innovation and joint projects because we have too many projects in different member states that are not interoperable,\u201d Kaja Kallas said ahead of the meeting.<\/p>\n
She stressed that the EU needed to push member states towards \u201cmore joint procurement\u201d and greater innovation, adding that lessons from Ukraine should be taken into account.<\/p>\n
Kallas noted that defense industry output remained a concern despite available funding.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe countries have a lot of funding on the table, but the defense industry is not ramping up its production,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Ukraine\u2019s defense minister is expected to join the talks, where discussions will include a proposed \u20ac90 billion ($97.8 billion) loan aimed at addressing Kyiv\u2019s urgent needs, Kallas said.<\/p>\n
She added that ministers would also meet representatives of the defense industry to examine bottlenecks in production and delivery.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to see what the problem is so we can bring them together,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
About the Middle East, Kallas said ministers would discuss Lebanon and maritime security operations.<\/p>\n
She pointed out that there was interest among member states in a possible new European mission to support Lebanese armed forces following the planned end of the UNIFIL mission later this year.<\/p>\n
Kallas also underlined that discussions would include the EU\u2019s Aspides naval operation in the Strait of Hormuz, adding that its operational plan could be adjusted if member states agreed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have it already. We only need to change the operational plan of that mandate,\u201d she said, adding that the structure for the mission was already in place but would require further political agreement and additional contributions from member states to proceed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Seyma Erkul Dayanc 12 May 2026\u2022Update: 12 May 2026 The EU foreign policy chief on Tuesday urged faster…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81133,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[211,210,31849],"class_list":{"0":"post-81132","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brussels","8":"tag-belgium","9":"tag-brussels","10":"tag-sitekeywords"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116564609312836600","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}