Paris Against 'Unlimited' Purchases: France Wants Exemptions for Non-EU Ukrainian Weapons to Be Temporary

France intends to push for the exemptions that allow Ukraine to procure weapons outside the European Union using European credit to remain strictly temporary. The question of how free Kyiv's purchases should be has turned into one of the notable intra-European disputes: Paris advocates reorienting funding toward its own defense industry, while a group of Northern and Eastern European countries demands maximum freedom of procurement for Ukraine.

The Financial Mechanism and Loan Rules

This concerns the Ukraine Support Loan financial instrument worth 90 billion euros, approved by EU member states for the 2026–2027 period. Of this amount, 60 billion euros is earmarked directly for military aid, and 30 billion euros for economic support. Under the loan rules, Ukraine may spend no more than 35% of the cost of defense products on purchases outside the European Union and the European Economic Area. At the same time, Kyiv retains the right to request exemptions if European equivalents are unavailable or if local producers cannot manufacture the required volumes in time.

Two Active Exemptions

Currently, the European Commission has approved two such exemptions for Ukraine, driven by a shortage of its own production capacity within the EU. The first concerns Chinese components for drones, and the second — American interceptor missiles for Patriot systems. Both authorizations, by Brussels' design, are meant to be situational and to be closed as European production recovers.

Paris's Position

France insists that these authorizations remain exclusively temporary, and that funding be gradually reoriented toward the European defense-industrial complex. Paris is home to one of Europe's most powerful defense industries, including the production of the Franco-Italian SAMP/T systems, which are considered the equivalent of the American Patriot. This is why the French position is built on the logic of gradually phasing out non-European supplies from the structure of Ukrainian purchases.

Contradictory Data

Here the positions of the two sides diverge sharply. France calls for limiting the duration of the exemptions and narrowing the scope of permissible out-of-block purchases. At the same time, a number of Northern and Eastern European countries oppose such restrictions: as early as July, the defense ministers of nine countries — Germany, Poland, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania — sent a letter to the head of European diplomacy Kaja Kallas and European Commissioner for Defense Andrius Kubilius, urging that Kyiv be given maximum freedom of procurement. "We continue to emphasize that the timely approval of product lists is of key importance, in particular through the pragmatic use of derogations (deviations from the rules) to procure materials produced by third countries," the officials stressed in their letter. Thus, within the framework of the same loan, two approaches coexist: a restraining one (Paris) and a pragmatically expansive one (the nine countries), and the final decision on the duration and scope of the exemptions will in fact become a compromise between them.

Context: Licenses and Deliveries

It is worth recalling that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that Britain and France had agreed to grant Ukraine a license for the domestic production of Storm Shadow/SCALP missiles. Earlier, the head of state reported that Ukraine had received a small batch of Patriot missiles. These statements underscore that the dispute over the limits of non-EU procurement is unfolding against the backdrop of real deliveries and Kyiv's attempts to build its own production, making the question of the duration of the derogations a practical, not merely rhetorical, one.