Rheinmetall, the German arms manufacturer, needed the approval to refurbish and sell 88 of the older Leopard tanks to Ukraine.
The vehicles, which first entered into service in 1965 and are no longer manufactured, will come on top of the dozens of Leopard 2s being shipped to Ukraine in the coming months.
“I can confirm that an export license has been issued,” German government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said on Friday.
Berlin is also considering plans to buy back 15 Gepard anti-aircraft tanks from Qatar, which were purchased by Doha to secure its World Cup stadiums, in order to deliver them to Ukraine.
Ukraine will fight to hold 'fortress' Bakhmut as long as it can
President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday that Ukraine would fight to hold on to the eastern "fortress" city of Bakhmut for as long as it could, and urged the West to supply long-range weapons to help Kyiv push Russian forces out of the Donbas region.
"Nobody will give away Bakhmut. We will fight for as long as we can. We consider Bakhmut our fortress," Zelensky told a news conference in Kyiv alongside top EU officials.
"Ukraine would be able to hold Bakhmut and liberate occupied Donbas if it received long-range weapons," he said.
Bakhmut has been at the centre of intense fighting for months.
The callous tactic requires large numbers of soldiers and there is "anecdotal evidence" that Russia is cutting back on "human wave style assaults" as it no longer has a sufficient supply of fighters coming in from prisons, according to the Ministry of Defence.
In its morning intelligence update on Friday it pointed to figures which suggest that mercenary group Wagner is no longer recruiting convicts in such high numbers - which had been critical to boosting Russian troops - in part due to tensions with the Kremlin.
Human wave assaults see an attacker attempting to flood the battlefield with a wave of densely packed soldiers who are sent directly towards enemy lines in a bid to overwhelm the opponent. It can lead to great loss of life, with a Ukrainian commander saying Russia was treating its conscripts as "single-use soldiers".
EU stumps up €25 million for demining
The EU is offering Ukraine €25 million to support demining efforts in areas that have been recaptured from the Russians, it announced on Friday.
“A large spread of mines and other explosive ordnances is being found in territories liberated by Ukrainian Armed Forces... Protecting civilians and their livelihoods is a priority," said the EU's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who is in Kyiv today for talks with the Ukrainian government.