EU member states have agreed to release €6.6bn in military aid for Ukraine, as a report by its own defence agency, seen by Reuters on September 24, warns Europe is rearming too slowly to face Russia by 2030.

EU member states agreed at a meeting of the Political and Security Committee in Brussels on September 25 to release the European Peace Facility (EPF) money, ending a blockade that began when Hungary's then prime minister Viktor Orban vetoed reimbursements in May 2023, Euronews reported.

"That's good news for Ukraine and bad news for Russia," EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, who also heads the European Defence Agency (EDA), said on social media. "Moscow's hybrid attacks try to intimidate Europe into scaling back its support for Ukraine. Europe is doing the opposite."

The money comes as Europe is being asked to pay for Ukraine's war and its own rearmament at once, and the EDA now says it is falling short on the second. EU states have gone from Kyiv's paymaster to weapons maker, while Ukraine's defence ministry faces a $27bn budget shortfall, and the two strands meet in Brussels on September 28, when EU defence ministers take up both the EPF and the readiness report.

Most of the unblocked money, €4.7bn, will reimburse member states for weapons already delivered to Ukraine, though Germany and Sweden have said they will put their shares towards new support for Kyiv, the Kyiv Independent reported. Another €900mn will top up the EU Military Assistance Mission (EUMAM), which trains Ukrainian soldiers inside the EU, and €1bn will fund new joint purchases of equipment. The facility has provided Ukraine with €11.1bn since 2022.

Orban's veto outlived his government. After Fidesz lost the April 12 election, his successor Peter Magyar opened talks on releasing the fund, but member states then argued over how much each should be reimbursed, at what rates, and whether the money should go to Ukraine instead. The EU's General Court this month threw out an Orban-era challenge to routing profits from frozen Russian assets through the facility. Kallas had said in early September that several states had pledged to redirect their reimbursements to Kyiv's air defence.

The EDA's first annual Defence Readiness Report, commissioned by EU leaders last year to track progress towards the Readiness 2030 goal, finds that member states' current plans "do not seem to meet" the aim of closing gaps in air and missile defence, ground combat, naval forces, ammunition stockpiles and drones, according to a summary prepared for the leaders.

"Tackling the challenges of a contested and deteriorating security environment and the threat posed by Russia's aggression requires moving further and substantially faster than now to reach defense readiness by 2030," the report says.

The agency credits the bloc with progress on spending, capability development and industrial readiness, but says "the current momentum and increased investment do not yet translate into sufficiently deployable, sustainable and interoperable forces" and that "critical capability gaps remain". "What has been achieved so far, although unprecedented, is not yet enough," its authors write.

Coordination has been a weak point before. The €800bn ReArm Europe plan ran into national protectionism. Europe was also slow to sign contracts with arms makers in the first years of the war.

Defence ministers will discuss the report on September 28 before it goes to EU leaders. The ministers' agenda also covers air defence for Ukraine, EUMAM and Russia's shadow fleet, and more member states could use the meeting to hand their EPF reimbursements to Kyiv.