According to its leader on Saturday, the European Union wants to work with the bloc’s defense sector to speed up and scale up the manufacturing of ammunition that is desperately required on the Ukrainian battlefield and to restock military supplies at home.

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, urged at the Munich Security Conference that the bloc prepare for the mass production of a COVID vaccine by doing what it did during the epidemic.

“We could think of, for example, advanced purchase agreements that give the defense industry the possibility to invest in production lines now to be faster and to increase the amount they can deliver,” she said.

Von der Leyen underlined that the bloc could not wait for months and years to be able to replenish its own military stocks or send munitions such as 155mm artillery shells to Ukraine.

“It is now the time, really, to speed up the production, and to scale up the production of standardized products that Ukraine needs desperately, for example standardized ammunition,” she said.