Thiery Breton, the commissioner of the European Commission for the internal market, will soon come to Croatia to talk with representatives of the military industry about their possibilities of producing ammunition for the needs of EU member states and Ukraine, the European Commission confirmed to Jutarnji list.
Breton has already embarked on a kind of tour of European countries to see the capabilities of the military industry after a project agreement for the joint procurement of ammunition under the European Defence Agency project was signed in Brussels on Monday.
The agreement was signed by 18 members, including Croatia, while the others expressed their intention to join the project. After signing the agreement on behalf of Croatia on Monday, Defence Minister Mario Banožić emphasized Croatia's unreserved support for the project and pointed out that the Ministry of Defence actively participated in its establishment from the beginning.
The agreement is worth two billion euros, and the goal of the European Union is to obtain more favourable conditions for the procurement of weapons and ammunition on the global market than those that each of the 27 member states would be able to negotiate separately.
According to the established plan, the budget of two billion euros would be used exclusively for the replacement of the equipment that the members donate to Ukraine, and there would be no work on additional arming of the EU countries. At the moment, the focus is on the fastest and most affordable procurement of all types of artillery ammunition for Ukraine.
In the past thirty years, Croatia has completely neglected the production of ammunition. All even more serious attempts to start ammunition production have failed. Except for one. In 2017, the first factory of artillery mortar ammunition was opened in the area of the former barracks "Kanjiža" in Stubička Slatina. According to information from Jutarnji list, it is the only company in Croatia that produces artillery and mortar ammunition, writes Jutarnji journalist Krešimir Žabec.