The EU pledged last year to deliver the desperately needed ammunition to Ukraine by March 2024 to help Kyiv battle against Russia’s invading forces.
So far, EU nations have only managed to provide 300,000 rounds from their existing stocks.
Countries are now placing joint orders for 155mm shells but there are doubts over the capacity of defence companies to churn out enough in time.
“Unfortunately, the cautionary voices are now right,” Germany’s defence minister Boris Pistorius said at a meeting with his EU counterparts in Brussels.
“The one million will not be reached. We have to assume that.”
EU officials insist it is still too early to say the target won’t be hit, despite growing skepticism that it can be attained.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said a major issue was that European defence firms were exporting about 40% of production to other countries.
“Maybe what we have to do is to try to shift his production to the priority one, which is Ukrainian. That would be quite a change,” he said.
The EU’s internal market commissioner Thierry Breton said efforts to ramp up production were having an impact and that the EU should be able to churn out a million shells a year.
Estonia’s defence minister Hanno Pevkur said his country had placed a €280 million order for ammunition – “the biggest procurement in Europe at this very moment”.
“We will try to do the maximum to deliver the shells to Ukraine because they need it,” he said.
“Look at Russia. They are producing today more than ever. They are getting shells from North Korea. Europe cannot say that Russia and North Korea can deliver and we cannot.”
The EU’s struggles to make good on promised deliveries comes as opposition in the US Congress has thrown doubt on key ally Washington’s ability to sustain supplies.
On the ground, fighting appears to have ground to a stalemate as a much-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive has failed to win back much territory.
Brussels says that together with EU member states it has funnelled military support worth €27 billion to Ukraine since Moscow invaded in February 2022.
Borrell in July proposed a new €20 billion fund over the next four years to help cover arms deliveries to Ukraine.
The plan was part of a broader Group of 7 vow to provide Kyiv long-term security commitments to help it ward off Russian aggression.
However, discussions over the EU initiative have stalled amid doubts from key member states.
Germany – which last week said it would double its own funding for Ukraine to €8 billion next year – is reluctant to commit more money to the EU pot.
Borrell said that the EU would present a revised plan to Ukraine by the end of the month ahead of a debate by EU leaders in December on approving it.