Meeting at the European Commission on Thursday, the 27 leaders also signed a security agreement with Ukraine to underline their support for Kyiv, while calling for more investment in the bloc’s defense industries and coordination of its defense systems.
Recognizing that the EU has struggled to supply Ukraine with enough weapons, the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said “we have been underinvesting in defense and now we have to recover the time that we have lost.
“We have to think about how we finance and (make a) big push to increase our defense capabilities.
“It is not going to be easy because neither member states nor the European Union have enough resources to make a big push.
“But this is clear that since the Euro crisis, Europeans have been underinvesting in defense.”
Member states are also expected to ask EU institutions to finalize details of a G7 deal to provide Ukraine with €50 billion in loans generated from frozen Russian central bank assets.
The two-day meeting comes after sources said that the three main centrist European groups—which do not include Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's conservatives—had agreed on a second term for Germany's Ursula von der Leyen to continue as European Commission president.
Meloni responded by saying the deal ignored the recent success of right-wing groups in the European Elections.
Arriving at the meeting on Thursday, Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the three groups had reached their agreement only to facilitate the process.
He said: “There is no Europe without Italy and there's no decision without Prime Minister Meloni,” adding that her reaction could have been due to a “misunderstanding.”
