Four EU countries agree to co-develop long-range cruise missiles

2 months ago 13

Poland, Germany, France and Italy signed a memorandum of understanding on Thursday to develop ground-launched cruise missiles with a range of more than 500 kilometres as they gathered on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Washington.

The agreement, which the four countries confirmed was intended to fill the gap in European defence caused by the ongoing war in Ukraine, was signed by Polish Defence Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz (Polish People’s Party, EPP) and his German, French and Italian counterparts, Boris Pistorius (SPD, S&D), Sebastien Lecornu (Renaissance, Renew) and Guido Crosetto (Fratelli d’Italia, ECR).

“The aim of the agreement is to forge cooperation that, in the future, will enable joint (defence) projects and shorten their implementation,” the Polish National Defence Ministry wrote on X.

Lecornu, for his part, told the media that “the idea is to open it up as widely as possible,” adding that the agreement “has value, including at the budgetary level, because it obviously also allows the different costs to be amortised”.

Lecornu also suggested that the UK’s new Labour government, led by Keir Starmer, could join the four-country pact.

A first draft document on the long-range missile is expected to be published by the end of 2024, with details such as specifications to be worked out later, Lecornu added.

Washington and Berlin announced the day before that they would begin deploying US long-range missiles on German soil in 2026.

Russia said the decisions taken at the NATO summit were a “serious threat to the country’s national security” and evidence that the alliance is an “instrument of confrontation, not a means of security.”

“We see that our adversaries in Europe and the United States are not in favour of dialogue. Judging by the documents adopted at the NATO summit, they are not supporters of peace,” a Kremlin representative was quoted as saying by the TASS news agency.

At the NATO summit, Poland also joined the 12-nation coalition to provide Ukraine with various types of drones. “It is one of the crucial capacities Ukraine now needs,” said Kosiniak-Kamysz.

Besides donations, part of the coalition will be the involvement of the countries’ defence industries in the production of drones for Ukraine, according to the Polish ministry’s statement.

The coalition would include Australia, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Sweden, the UK and Ukraine.

However, Poland will not take part in shooting down Russian missiles over Ukrainian territory without a NATO decision, even if this is what Ukraine has long been asking for, Kosiniak-Kamysz said.

“It is obvious that Ukraine will always expect much more than they may receive, and in this case, it may be so,” he stressed.

Yet, “it must be the alliance’s decision, never a unilateral one (…), and Poland will surely not take such a decision by itself,” he added.

(Aleksandra Krzysztoszek | Euractiv.pl)