Finland's Defense Minister: EU must create clear mechanisms for joint production with Ukraine

Finland's Minister of Defense Antti Hakkanen stated this ahead of a meeting of the EU Foreign Affairs Council in Brussels, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"We are supporting that Ukraine is heavily involved in the European defense industry, and the drones are key points in that field," Hakkanen emphasized.

According to the minister, Finland is currently developing its own drone defense systems and is assessing, together with several European countries, the possibilities for joint procurement and production.

"We are now developing Finnish drone defense systems and assessing with several European countries how can we do joint procurements and what are the concrete measures for cooperation with Ukraine in that field, some joint production capacity," he added.

Hakkanen stressed that such cooperation with Ukraine should have clearly defined support from the EU.

"The European Union has to find the measures, clear measures, how they are supporting member states to do this cooperation in production capacity with Ukraine. Because Ukrainians have the best technological expertise and also the industrial expertise, how to cost-effectively scale up the production," he noted.

As Ukrinform reported, today, February 11, the European Parliament approved a resolution on the EU's strategic defense and security partnerships, in which Ukraine was named a priority strategic partner and a proposal was made to formalize cooperation with it in the field of security and defense.

Photo for illustration purposes: Rheinmetall