Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, France and Hungary have decided to jointly procure Mistral air defense missiles for €500 million.
The five European countries signed an agreement for the purchase of more than 1,000 missiles on June 19 during a summit held to discuss European air defense, the French defense ministry confirmed in a release.
President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday he made some progress in convincing some of EU allies to look at a more home-grown defense strategy, in contrast to a German-led effort to jointly procure air defense systems from outside Europe.
The Mistral man-portable surface-to-air missiles are built by MBDA.