Brussels ( Brussels Morning) – MEP Valérie Hayer underscores EU support for Ukraine amid security concerns, advocating for closer ties and accelerated integration.
EU Liberals leader MEP Valérie Hayer reasserted her centrist party’s staunch support to Ukraine during a two-day visit to the war-torn country, as security takes centre scene in the drive for June’s European elections.
“We must demonstrate to European citizens that this war in Ukraine has a tremendous impact on us, and the security of Ukrainian people is our security,” Hayer said. “Our destiny is intertwined.”
The visit reached amid worries that Russian President Vladimir Putin could ramp up aggression on Ukraine after attempting to involve Kyiv in a terror attack on a Moscow concert hall last Friday in which at least 143 people died. Ukrainian military sources state Russia fired at least 26 ballistic missiles at Kyiv in the last week, striking civilian infrastructure.
With tension over the destiny of US support following November’s presidential election and ammunition stockpiles draining quickly, Kyiv is increasingly relying on its European allies to reload its stocks. “The greatest security worry is the growing hole in our artillery firepower,” Ukraine’s deputy minister of defence, Yuriy Dzhygyr, said.
“We have the backing, we feel the support, we comprehend there are technical problems with the replenishment of inventories but we feel your solidarity and very much appreciate it.” It represents political parties have made keeping Ukraine – and strengthening Europe’s defensive capacities – a centrepiece of their election platforms. A standing paper on European defence revealed by the Renew group on Wednesday rises “drastically enhancing” joint European procurement of arms and raising defence spending on both EU and national levels.
Ukraine’s battlefield lapses in recent weeks have instilled a purpose of urgency among EU leaders, who are dying with precedent to improve the flow of military and financial aid to their war-struck neighbour. The bloc is moving rapidly to exploit windfall profits from Russian assets immobilised in the EU to purchase more arms, and is even extending a fraught dialogue on the divisive potential of raising joint EU debt to fund defence needs.
Speaking from Ukraine, Hayer stated it’s time to take a “leap forward in European defence.”
“A real European Defence Union will preserve money by stopping duplication and destruction, but to do this we must fund now and invest in Europe’s defence industrial base,” she stated.
The Renew group is on the path to narrowly cling on to its role as the EU Parliament’s third biggest faction, according to an exclusive poll by Ipsos.
Hayer is one of Renew’s principal EU candidates and is also leading the list of Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party in France. Poll’s most recent projections positioned Renew at 87 seats, and the surging far-right Identity and Democracy at fourth position with 80 seats. ID’s cast 31-seat leap is propelled by the victory of France’s Rassemblement National and its lead candidate, 28-year-old Jordan Bardella, who will contend with Hayer for the French vote and who has shattered with his party’s historically close relations with Russia by adopting a hard line on Moscow.
Hayer also pledged to move Ukraine forward on its route to EU membership by pitching an observer position for Ukrainian lawmakers in the EU Parliament “as soon as possible.”
The process of achieving accession to the bloc is notoriously long, and despite EU heads green-lighting the opening of formal discussions with Ukraine last December, the route to full-fledged EU membership is long.
It has initiated the bloc to float ways of gradual integration, including by collecting politicians from candidate nations around the decision-making table before the acquisition process is completed. “We want Ukrainian politicians in the EU Parliament as observers as soon as practicable, but we do not have to delay until an official observer position is granted to seriously start working together,” Hayer said.
