On Monday, the European Union foreign ministers approved the deployment of an EU naval mission to protect shipping from Houthi militants in the Red Sea.

The European Union is acting to “restore maritime security and freedom of navigation in a highly strategic maritime corridor,’’ EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrel said in a statement.

Called Aspides after the ancient Greek word for shield, the naval mission involved sending European warships and airborne early warning systems to the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and surrounding waters.

Aspides vessels would have orders only to fire on the militants if they attacked first and would not be authorised to shoot pre-emptively.

The operational command was to be in the Greek city of Larissa.

Houthi militants from Yemen have been attacking ships in the region in what they said was retaliation for Israeli military action in the Gaza Strip.

An EU official said on Friday that the country most harmed by the piracy was not Israel but Egypt.

This had caused declining traffic of 40 per cent loss of revenue for the Suez Canal Authority.

The European Union’s economy is taking a hit too, the EU’s Economy Commissioner, Paolo Gentilioni, told reporters last Thursday.

Mr Gentilioni said that “as shipping through the Red Sea has been rerouted, delivery times for shipments between Asia and the EU have increased by 10–15 days.”

He noted that the costs of the shipments had gone up by around 400 per cent.

EU foreign ministers were also discussing at their meeting in Brussels how to reform the way the bloc paid for military aid to Ukraine.

Currently, individual EU member states providing aid to Ukraine directly could be compensated by the EU through a funding mechanism called the European Peace Facility (EPF).

But foreign ministers were also discussing an alternative arrangement where member states procured some Ukrainian aid jointly through a €5 billion ($5.4 billion) top-up of the EPF budget.

Germany, as the EU’s largest economy, however, would be expected to pay the majority of the top-up at €1.25 billion.

Berlin is pushing for aid supplied individually on a bilateral basis to Ukraine to count against their new obligations to fund the EPF.

An EU diplomat told dpa that given the size of the German military aid budgeted for Ukraine in 2024, it is now around €8 billion.

This would in effect, cancel out any additional EPF financial contributions from Germany in the new arrangements under discussion.

Other EU member states wanted such bilateral aid to be kept entirely separate from funding the EPF.

Germany’s unwillingness to pay more into a joint EU fund for military aid to Ukraine was very unfortunate, Lithuania’s Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said on Monday.

“There is a principle of European unity,’’ he said.

“Of course, we can do things bilaterally, but it’s way more difficult for a country like mine to support Ukraine bilaterally than to be in a group of 27,” he added.

(dpa/NAN)