Committee on Security and Defence Ordinary meeting
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SEDE European Parliament
Follow its sittingsMarie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
And the vote is closed, and it's clearly adopted. Thank you very much. Congratulations.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
So we have just a short break. We are waiting for the commission. That is our problem. We are always waiting for the commission. So, please stay here.
They will come. I hope so. Otherwise, we.
Honest, we what do think, Chris?
Okay. We can go ahead.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Wait one minute, maybe. Okay. Now go. Go. Go.
So take a seat, dear colleagues. We will continue. Today, we are pretty fast. That's good. Even our governments are slow.
Let's show them that we are fast. So, dear colleagues, we now have the consideration. Please take a seat. Please take a seat. Thank you very much.
So we now have the consideration of amendments to the draft opinion of the European Competitive Nifa, which will be a key instrument in the next multinational financial framework for defense investments. SEDE will table its opinion to the lead committee, ITRE. Before giving the floor to the rapporteur, let me remind you that the adoption of the opinion in SEDE, excuse me. Hello. Please.
Thank you very much. So before giving the floor to the rapporteur, let me remind you that the adoption of the opinion and state is planned for the 14th April 2026. Now over to the rapporteur, Ryo Tarras, EPP, for his introductory remarks. Rio, the floor is yours for 3 minutes.
Riho Terras
Thank you, Chair. Dear colleagues, we have received 487 amendments in addition to the initial draft report, and we try to take on board as many of them as possible in the draft, compromise text. First of all, I would like to thank the colleagues for the contribution in the form of amendments. I'm happy to report that we have already circulated the first draft of the compromise text to the shadows, and the negotiations have already started at the technical level. Next week, we will have a shadows meeting, and I will and we are working hard towards reaching a good result in the very limited time frame that we have.
I very much welcome amendments from the socialist and the renewal that go in the same direction as my draft report regarding the war reserve, which is an emergency flexibility mechanism to reallocate resources from the police or other police areas into the defense in case a member state is attacked and the mutual defense clause of article 42 7 is triggered. This issue is a very important priority, and I'm sure that we will reach a satisfactory result. It is good that as parliament, we are going in the same direction on how to operationalize the mutual defense clause of article forty-two-seven. I'm looking forward to hearing the comments and remarks from the shareholders now. Thank you very much.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Thank you very much. I will now give the floor to the shareholder reporters and any other members who would like to take the floor for two minutes each maximum, and we will start with Tobias from S and D.
Tobias Cremer
Thank you very much, Che. And thank you, first of all, Rio, for what I think is a very good report and for the work that you've put in. It's an excellent draft. And I also want to thank all the advisers and the secretariat for the excellent work. And what I hear from the first technical meeting was very positive.
We, particularly on the S and D side, appreciate the alignment of this report with the existing programs such as ADIP, EDF, and in the ECF framework because we do need this consistency. We do need to be very clear on that. We have tabled amendments that are focused particularly on two points. One is the consistency with the existing programs, also really on a technical level because there are two of the devil's in the detail, but also on greater clarity for our defense industry in terms of long-term reports. I mean, we did just also the initiative report on the single market of defense, and one of the big issues when it comes to the supply side is this lack of certainty.
So, here, the ECF has an important role to play, and we are very glad that so many of our proposals in this regard have already been included in the compromise amendments. There remain a few issues that we will continue to work on, notably on funding rates, but we are hopeful that, there too, we can align it with EDIP and work more closely together. So I really want to thank you again, also the other Shadows, for very positive discussions. I look forward to the Shadows meeting and to deliver very clearly a very strong opinion from CEDA, which I think will be both necessary and hopefully very welcome to the report itself. Thank you.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Thank you very much. Yes, it's absolutely necessary. So I didn't see Jaroslava. So is anybody there from the Patriots who want to take the floor? No?
Okay. And the same with the ECR. Anybody wants to renew? Okay. Then we Hannah.
Hannah Neumann
Thank you, chair. And first of all, thank you, Rio, for the work that has been done on the technical level, but, I mean, also the strong report in the first place. From what I see in the draft compromises, but also from the comments of my colleagues here, I'm pretty sure we're gonna build a strong, broad coalition, aiming mainly at influencing work in budget and then later on in the council. The points that are important from our side, but I see them to a large degree already reflected in the compromises, are, first of all, that all of this money that now all of a sudden we have, which is good, is used to really strengthen European sovereignty and independence in the defense sector and not just paid for pet projects that somebody always wanted to do at some point, but that's not gonna help us in this regard. Then also to make sure that we change budget allocations and funding rates with our amendments to reflect the European political priorities and work with earmarking.
Because if there's an awful lot of flexibility, that's a budget for 7 years. There's a danger that council just shifts the money however they see fit, and I think we, as the European Parliament, should make our mark in this one. If ever in the seven years they want to change something, they can come back to the parliament and ask us about it, but I would not want to give them a free ride, a free pass from the very beginning. Then also what is very crucial for us to stay up to speed to the real world developments is that we strengthen especially small and medium enterprises and startups because those are the ones that we need for the agility that is needed, not only when it comes to drones, also when we talk about cyber and a lot of other new developments going on. So I think here, we should make sure that the money doesn't go mainly to the big ones because they don't have funding issues as much as small and medium enterprises and startups have it.
Then also that the money is used to strengthen European goals such as common procurement, interoperability, interchangeability, and consolidation of the defense markets. I mean, we know all these buzzwords. We agree on the buzzwords. But now with all this money, we can actually make them happen, and we should not give up on this possibility. And the last one, and I mean to be as you said, safeguard key elements from Egypt.
For me, the most important would be the European preference, and I would even like to see it stronger than in Egypt, because that project is not for two years, but it's in two years for seven years. So I think we can be a bit more ambitious than we were in Egypt. So I'm looking forward to continuation of good talks with you and then to be a bit of a nuisance to Budge and counsel because I think that's what our role is.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Thank you very much, Hannah. So, now I give the floor. The left is not here. So now I give the floor to the rapporteur. Riyo?
Yes. Yes. Oh, sorry. Excuse me. Sorry.
The floor is yours.
Thank you, Schoen. Thank.
Özlem Demirel
you. I'm going to speak in German. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you very much to the Rapporteur too for this draft. I do have a few comments. What the Commission has produced here is a big step.
Active industry policy, a focal point for driving that industry forward, more than €230,000,000 and more than half of it for military type measures, defense industry space programs or relating to defense and military aspects. We seem to be the only ones who are defending European contracts. Measures of a military nature, which come from the EU budget, are allowed under the relevant article. We don't wish to see that weakened for rearmament, and therefore, we reject this fund and this construction. That won't come as any surprise to you.
Well, we do agree as Parliament, and what I would stress is that we have a budgetary framework that's been created that is not transparent in the slightest. A lack of transparency is bad for Parliament's rights over the next years. We think that the commission has to take steps, recognize the rights of parliament with regard to the budget, so that we don't continuously play the same game where a vanderlion takes ground, creates less transparency. And in that area, I would like us to speak together and to speak strongly to Vanderlion's commission. Thank you.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Now I give the floor to the rapporteur, Riou, if he wants to for this comment.
Riho Terras
Well, thank you. Thank you very much for a lot of very positive inputs from the shadow rapporteurs. I should, of course, remind everybody, especially listening to the last statement, that we are in SEDE committee, which talks about defense issues. Sorry to say that. We will take into account most of the comments.
I'm sure that we will be able to solve technical and political issues in the upcoming negotiations and look forward to fruitful collaboration with the shadow operators on this set of opinion. And don't have any other remarks, next week is the hard work ahead of us. Thank you.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Thank you very much. Is anybody here wants to say and add something from the no? Okay. The commission? Yes.
Please. The floor is yours.
Speaker 17
Good morning. Thank you, madam chair, and thank you for giving the commission the floor. The proposed European Competitiveness Fund will be the main financing instrument to support the defense industry in Europe in the next MFF. Therefore, the commission greatly values the opinion and expertise of this committee. Thank you very much for your strong engagement, which is also your expertise, which is also quite clearly reflected in the numerous amendments that have been submitted.
Speaker 16
I would like to pick a few points that were raised by the rapporteurs and shadow rapporteurs. The need for continuity, and this is fully aligned with the logic of the commission's proposal. Defense is about long-term and very complex projects. Therefore, industry needs predictability and long-term commitments. It is thus essential to ensure that kind of continuity in both the existing instruments, the European Defense Fund, HEZAP, ADERPA, EDP, but also consistency in the rules, and this was mentioned by previous speakers.
Speaker 18
Rules reflecting the specificities of the defense sector and its strategic dimension and security sensitivity. At the same time, we need a framework that is flexible enough to allow us to respond to evolving needs, to new priorities, and to emerging threats. We see the dynamic development of the geopolitical situation. We need to be able to reflect in a more agile and targeted manner. This is an important lesson that was learned from the current MFF, and this kind of flexibility is built into the Commission's proposal.
Speaker 16
The importance of SMEs and start-ups is fully shared. They will gain better access to financing, to allow them to grow and scale up, contributing, as was mentioned, with their agility to a more responsive and competitive industrial ecosystem. DG DEFIS and the commission look positively to all the contributions that will help to make the European Competitiveness Fund a success. For us, that would mean a fund which is impactful and operational with substantial firepower to incentivize member states to spend better, to spend together, and to spend European. And this will be key to increasing Europe's defense readiness.
We will look very carefully at the final opinion of this committee stemming from these contributions, which we think will certainly set the tone for the European Parliament's priorities in the defense industry field. In the same vein, we also look forward to the draft report of the ITREC Committee. Thank you very much.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Thank you very much. So we come to the next item. Our next item is a consideration of the draft opinion on the commission's proposal regarding the civil protection mechanism and the union support for his emergency preparedness and response. In short, UCPM. Citi will provide its opinion to Envi and Sand, the lead committees for this file.
Before giving the floor to Rapporteur Raines Potsak, let me remind you of the timetable for the adoption of this opinion. The deadline for amendments is set for tomorrow, 20th March at noon. The opinion will be adopted in CDE in June. The adoption of the report by Envy and Sandd is scheduled for September. I now give the floor to Rapporteur Raines for 4 minutes.
The floor is yours.
Reinis Pozņaks
Thank you, chair. Dear colleagues, what we are discussing today is not just a technical update of the civil protection mechanism, but a fundamental shift in how Europe understands security, preparedness, and resilience. Because the reality we face today is profoundly different from the one this mechanism was originally designed for. Crises are no longer isolated events. They are interconnected cross-border and increasingly driven by hybrid threats combining cyber attacks, disinformation, sabotage, and the deliberate targeting of critical infrastructure.
First, we must recognize that critical infrastructure is now on the front line. Energy grids, transport networks, digital systems, hospitals, these are no longer just civilian assets. They are strategic targets. This report strengthens our ability to protect them, including by addressing the growing threats posed by drones and unmanned systems, and by ensuring that member states have the tools to respond effectively with proper oversight and accountability. Because without the secure infrastructure, there is no functioning society and no security.
Second, we introduced a necessary and overdue shift: stronger civil and military cooperation. In today's crisis, the civilian authorities increasingly depend on military capabilities, whether it is in logistics, medical support, or crisis response. But at the same time, military effectiveness depends on resilient civilian systems. This report improves coordination, clarifies roles, and ensures that we can work together across the sectors and across the borders while fully respecting member states' competences and existing commitments. Third, we place a strong emphasis on civil resilience, on the preparedness of our citizens.
Preparedness is not only about institutions, it's about people. It means early warning systems and actual that actually reach the population. It means shelters, training, and clear communication. It means building trust, reducing panic, and ensuring the society can function even under extreme pressure. Because resilience begins at the local level in communities, municipalities, and households.
And this brings me to the crucial poll point, the role of civil society and NGOs. In every crisis, it's not only governments that act, its volunteers, its local organizations, its NGOs that are often the first to arrive and last to leave. They know their communities. They build trust. They deliver help where institutions cannot reach fast enough, and yet too often, are treated as an afterthought.
This must change. We need to support their work. We need to ensure real cooperation between public authorities and civil societies because resilience is not built only from top down, but it is built from the ground up. Fourth, this report addresses defense industrial readiness and supply chain resilience. We have learned without reliable supply chains, without access to critical components, without industrial capacity, resilience remains an illusion.
And that's why we propose strategic stockpiling, stronger public-private cooperation, and better access for SMEs and dual-use companies to participate in preparedness efforts. So we should integrate Ukraine, and we must also learn from those who are already facing these threats on a daily basis. Ukraine has shown us the speed, ability, and innovation, especially in areas like drone warfare and civil preparedness, are decisive. So we should integrate these lessons into our own systems faster and more systematically. Europe must move from a reactive approach to a proactive one, from fragmentation to coordination, from vulnerability to resilience, because, ultimately, resilience is the foundation of our security, stability, and our freedom, and security starts with preparedness.
Thank you.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Thank you very much. So now I will give the floor to them for maximum two minutes each. So I couldn't see. So Jana, maybe from the EPP. Yes, please.
The floor is yours.
Riho Terras
Yeah. Thank you, chair. Miss Sofko could not be here today due to other commitments, and she asked me to replace her. So I'm reading the following statement on behalf of her. She would like to thank the reporter Poznax for his work on this important file.
This is not her first engagement with the Union Civil Protection Mechanism. She worked as a rapporteur for the development committee's opinion on its revision in 2018, and that expertise gives her a clear sense of both what these instruments can achieve and where it still needs to go further. The world has changed significantly since Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine has demonstrated in the most concrete possible terms what it means when civilian infrastructure is deliberately targeted, when populations need shelter, and when civil and military actors must coordinate under real pressure. Europe cannot afford a civil protection framework designed only for the national disasters in an era where deliberate attacks on society have become part of the threat landscape. As a shadow rapporteur, her priorities are clear.
Governance of this mechanism must remain firmly in the hands of the member states. The security ambition of this opinion needs real operational tools behind them, from anticipatory actions to emergency communications to the critical infrastructure response. And the volunteers, local communities, and civil society organizations who are always first on the scene must be properly recognized and supported as partners in the system, not as peripheral actors. She looks forward to working constructively with the rapporteur and all colleagues. Thank you.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Thank you very much. And, the shareholder report here for ASD is André. The floor is yours.
André Franqueira Rodrigues
Thank you, chair. I will speak in Portuguese. Thank.
you. In recent years, we've tried to protect European civil defense mechanisms, to try to respond to health care crises and other types of crises that might emerge. Regardless of how prepared they might be, no member states can face cross border challenges, and that's something that we saw during the floods in Portugal or fires that we see year on year devastating European countries. So the European Union has to share knowledge, coordination and best practices amongst civil protection bodies to ensure proper, harmonized resource management. We also need to include investment in civil protection in order to ensure that European citizens are more aware and more prepared for risky situations.
Greater information and awareness, a more aware society is, of course, a safer society. So we have to give local, regional, and national bodies the technical and financial tools that are appropriate. We have to play a key role. Yes, prevention is best, but we also need to try to remedy situations. Where necessary, we need to be able to mobilize military resources as well, in a complementary manner and in a way that lines up with civil protection.
For example, a hybrid threat or drones or cyber attacks on critical infrastructure, ensuring a technologically advanced integrated approach will ensure that we can better protect European citizens. Again, the European Union has to do more, better, and quicker. Thank you.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
So the Patriots are not here. We continue with renew Engen. The floor is yours.
Well,
Engin Eroglu
I too would like to thank the rapporteur for the draft report. It is very important that we change structures. We have a new geopolitical situation, but we have to have the financial framework in place. There has to be funds available. Otherwise,
all we.
Engin Eroglu
have words on a page. We have some amendments, and I think we will reach our goal. But unfortunately, not all current challenges are covered. We think that civil protection requires cooperation between us and the Commission. It's important for the Commission to collect data, but the collection of the data, how automatic can it be?
There are hundreds, thousands, perhaps millions of people working on this. Is it possible for them all to input data? No, it has to happen automatically. At the end of the day, we need software that connects people working in civil protection. It has to be European if all services are to be covered.
If we think about infrastructure, if we're thinking about hospitals, other services too, they need to be covered. So we need to make it clear in this report that we need dedicated software and that we want to do more than, I don't know, forest firefighting because we could have a dynamic crisis spreading from one region to another across the European Union. And that means that we need to create a network throughout the union, so that if one node fails, others will be available. And that has to be done locally, working with local volunteers. It can't be steered centrally from Brussels.
Look forward to submitting the amendment.
Martins.
from the Queen's. Yeah.
Mārtiņš Staķis
Thank you, Reins, for the draft report. We will propose four types of amendments. First, will be about civil society NGOs. So we want to formally recognize the role of civil society and NGOs in the union's preparedness architecture. These organizations do the work nobody else wants to do, often without pay, from the first aid and shelter support to psychological assistance, and they deserve proper recognition and financing.
Then seventy-two hour preparedness. We support strengthening the household and community preparedness for the first 72 hours after disaster or crisis. This is one of the most successful ideas in our region because nothing makes you think about what could go wrong, quote, like actually packing a 72 hour bag. Critical infrastructure, the regulation needs stronger language on protecting critical infrastructure and essential services against hybrid threats. We tend to forget how vulnerable our infrastructure really is until someone sends in a small drone, and we shut down our airports.
And last but not least, about shelter infrastructure, we also want to see language on the necessity of adequate shelter infrastructure. When we think about the threats we face today, the safety of civilians must be the absolute priority, especially in regions that face conventional military threats, where this infrastructure is still missing. So we're looking forward to the thoughtful corporation. Thank you.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Thank you very much. Now I give the floor to any other members who would like to speak for one minute each. And, Helder, you have the floor.
Hélder Sousa Silva
Thank you, Cheryl. I will speak in Portuguese. Chair,
We want to protect the euro. How long has it been since these mechanisms have been reformed? Europe has been affected by fires and by the pandemic, but we've also seen this war in Ukraine. The civil protection mechanism is a step in the right direction, but there are shortcomings that we can't ignore. And, of course, the most significant of these is, regarding the regulation, which doesn't provide for help in case of armed attack.
It's referred to in the recitals. But if a member state is attacked and its government can't respond, this mechanism won't be activated without a formal request. Our amendments resolve this fragility in two different ways. First of all, to ensure that assistance will be automatic by invoking the treaty and the article in the treaty and also ensuring that it can be mobilized to protect civilians and emergency services, without having to wait for bureaucracy, because in war, there is no time to wait. We also corrected the fact that there was no reference to NATO.
I think we need to refer to NATO. This is part of the civilian and military architecture in Europe, and ignoring NATO commitments, we think is not correct. That's why this committee exists to bring the security and defense dimension where it has been forgotten. So this is our contribution through the amendment that we've introduced to the initial proposal of the rapporteur, who I would like to thank.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Thank you very much. Are there more comments? No? Okay. Then finally, I give the floor to the commission for three minutes maximum each.
First, we start with the deputy director from DG Echio, Hans Das. The floor is yours.
Speaker 28
Thank you so much, madam chair, and thank you very much to the SEDA committee and to the rapporteur in particular for the importance it is attaching to this file, which might not be the largest file in budgetary terms, but which has a particular importance when it comes to dealing with crisis situations. And the context in which this proposal needs to be considered is grim. We have an increase in natural disasters linked to climate change. We have a very volatile security risk or security threat landscape. And so it's clear that we need to be prepared, and we need to prepare the civil protection mechanism for all scenarios, including the worst case scenario of an armed aggression against one or more member states.
Speaker 29
Recent developments in The Middle East have been another example highlighting the need to develop a more robust civil protection capacity. We have helped in the last few days to bring 13,000 EU citizens back from various countries, and that requires huge logistical capacity, just by way of example. But it also shows the need to develop more cross-sectoral crisis management approaches. And much of that requires that we work in advance of a crisis. We need to invest more in anticipation and preparedness, in capacity building.
And much of that work needs to be done together between the civilian and the military actors, and that's where this committee obviously has a major contribution to make. We think it is important to strengthen the civil protection mechanism by strengthening the civil protection capacity to deal with disasters as well as the health capacity, to strengthen our cross sectoral approaches and to have more civil military cooperation on all of these issues. So we very much welcome your support on strengthening the civil military cooperation provisions in the proposal. I would like to highlight also that this has raised concerns on the council side from some member states. So it is very important that we hear from the parliament on these issues.
We also welcome your support on strengthening EU NATO cooperation in this respect, and this evolves around three elements in our view. It is about the need for more investments both to ramp up military readiness, but also to ramp up civilian preparedness across all sectors, including critical infrastructure, so that the two come hand in hand. It is about more joint concrete planning for scenarios, including the worst-case scenarios of war in Europe, and it is about more joint training and joint exercises. And so we very much welcome amendments like number twenty four and twenty five. All of that work needs to be done at the national level and EU level.
It's very clear that we have a supporting competence only, and that the primary competence is with member states. We fully acknowledge that. But for us to carry out our supporting competence, we need to be fully plugged into that civil military coordination. Think about the rescue stockpiles, for instance, that need to be mobilized. We need to be part of that coordination in order to make sure that they can usefully assist member states.
So thank you very much for your help in bringing these two dimensions, the civilian and the military, closer together, and we're very keen to continue to work with you. Thank you.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Thank you very much. And the next will be for DG Herrera, director general Florica Finck Ruija. The floor is yours.
Speaker 30
Thank you, madam chair, and thank you, rapporteur, for acknowledging that the medical countermeasures will be strategic assets in any armed conflict, mass casualty situation, or hybrid attack situation. And MCMs,
which we
Speaker 30
Call medical countermeasures are actually strategic assets. They are part and parcel of any national or collective defense. They are also part of our EU readiness. And when you look at CBRN medical countermeasures, so the antidotes in case of its use, then they are certainly part of our deterrence narrative. So, having this availability of what we would call medical countermeasures, these are vaccines, antidotes, protective equipment, but also devices for early detection.
This availability, equitable availability, and also rapid availability is a core mandate for D. J. Herra and for the Commission in health emergency, which would be triggered when some of these situations, the Honourable Member in its report referred to. So, for that, we will need funding because many of these medical countermeasures are niche products. They're extremely expensive.
And we normally, and I can't help not saying that, would use also the ECF fund for that, because today we do this with the EIB and others to go for venture capital funding for small start-ups for SMEs, precisely in order to have niche and also biotechnologies ready, which we do not have normally at the market. A good example is the development, together with the French armed forces, of an antidote against ricin threats, which was one of the most potent agents in bioterrorist attacks, and we made it happen and it is now available as a new antidote. We need the full end to end approach that I already mentioned, targeted innovation and research, but also. And then I come here to the UCPM HEAR instrument, which is a new funding instrument, where we have a civil protection part and a health part under the overall approach of, of course, preparedness. And here, we would definitely have to fund early detection, emergency response, reservation, and production capabilities in the industry in order to scale up one of these medical countermeasures in case of need. And for that, UCPM HAIR instrument will be the main funding instrument for health preparedness in the future.
I'm very happy to come back to this committee, should you be interested, to inform you more about what we would do in health emergencies and how we would work with NATO and other military actors already today, and also in the future. Thank you.
Reinis Pozņaks
No. Very sure. Just want to thank all the colleagues for all the comments and ideas. And I'm very happy to hear that they are not contradicting each other but complementing each other. So, I'm looking forward to all the amendments and work with all the shadows.
So, see you. Thank you.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Thank you very much. That's good. Yes. See you. And we continue now with the defense Grunity European Defense Fund, and we have guests.
And please join us. Sorry. Perfect. Okay. So, dear colleagues, the next point on the agenda is the scrutiny of the implementation of the European Defense Fund.
It's my pleasure to welcome Sylvia Keinshuber, deputy director of the defense industrial programs at DG DEFIS. Since its creation, the European Defence Fund has supported the defense industry across member states to develop collaborative research and development projects with the aim of delivering innovative and interoperable defense technologies and equipment. Today, we would like presentations on concrete outcomes from the EDF's investment in recent years. We would be grateful if you could present key projects that have led to the development of new military equipment, which is likely to be produced on an industrial scale, acquired by member states and used by their armed forces. So, missus Kainzhuber, the floor is yours for five minutes, and afterwards, your colleague, mister Praslavsky.
Right? Yeah. Yes. The floor is yours. Thank.
Speaker 34
Thank you very much, president. So, I will quickly run a bit, start up and then finish up, and I'll leave the presentation now, really of concrete outcomes which we have achieved so far under the program here to my Deputy Head of Unit. So we share. Very quickly, we had already had the pleasure and were invited and are very grateful for the presentation on the occasion we had to present the 2026 work program of the EDF, and now this is a bit of a follow-up. So if we could go to the first slide.
Speaker 35
Yes. So let me just quickly recall. I don't want to go into the details of the work program, just quickly recall where we stand. From the CHF 7,300,000,000.0, which is available for us under the EDF, we have committed so far CHF 6,400,000,000.0 in defense R and D, so joint research and development projects. We have become, with that investment and with that budget available to the fund, the EU or the EDF has become the top three defense R and D investors in Europe.
Speaker 34
Last time, I presented to you the sixth annual work program, which has just been published. Calls are open for submission until September. We have currently 24 ongoing collaborative R and D projects that involve 161,650 unique participants. Unique participants means we don't count the duplications of certain entities in the projects that are funded under the EDF. What we also wanted to highlight is there is really traction and attractiveness to the program.
So we had 25 calls last year, a record number of 410 proposals that were submitted, which is really an increase of 37% compared to the previous calls, 2024. And it is an increase literally of 3x of proposals received since we started the programme in 2021. So you see it's really attractiveness interest in the industry is really going up and keeps growing. What also is to highlight is the high number of SME participation, thanks to the specific calls we're focusing on, which focus on SMEs only, bonuses that are enshrined in the programme for increasing the EU funding contribution to SMEs. So that led to a really impressive high participation of SMEs in all our projects.
Speaker 35
Next slide, please. Just very shortly before we go into the concrete proposals, one needs to know, the EDF regulation provides that we have annual work programmes, annual calls to implement the program, which led us a bit to the problem which we had to solve in the beginning as to how we ensure that we have a very clear red line that sort of leads us through the program with outputs and results which we want to achieve in all the different domains. And that ended or led to the creation of the indicative multiannual perspective map, which contains, and that's also important, a section where we not only say this is what we're going to do over the years and this is what we plan to do in the next three years. It's also containing a section where we agreed with Member States, this is the main expected outcomes which we want to achieve in all the projects, which in certain domains leading, contributing to a very specific output demonstrators, ideally prototypes, ideally in specific domains. Two things still to highlight.
Speaker 34
What you see on the side, of these 42 projects running currently, there are 17 who also aim at the development of standards, interoperable with NATO standards. That's important. So whenever we can in our projects, we refer to and use NATO standards to ensure interoperability and compatibility as well. And we have set out in this multi-annual planning perspective, in total, about 50 prototypes to be achieved in the different kinds of EU capability areas, roughly summarized here. And I don't go into the detail.
You'll hear a lot about that in the coming slides from my colleague. What is important to underline is that all the topics, whenever we have a work programme, what we're trying to do is prioritize any R and D topic that Member States would like to see and put forward to us for a work programme, that we are trying to see that we prioritize what actually contributes, the topics that really contribute to these agreed outcomes, main expected outcomes in the map. What we're also trying to do is we have annual work programs trying to ensure over time that there is a continuation and a continuous effort put into pursuing certain main expected outcomes of the map over time. So we only have not one R and D project on a given topic. We follow on over the years in a rhythm of two to three years, and try to really stepwise bring that to the expected outcomes, which can, at the moment, foresee the perspective up to 2031.
And with that, I would then hand over right away to the next slide, and to my colleague, Cressio, next to my side.
Speaker 36
Thank you very much. Good morning, also from me. What we want to do in the next two slides is just to illustrate how all these projects lead to concrete capabilities that already start entering the armed forces. We have taken some examples. This is not an exhaustive list, but just for you to understand that we support projects in all five domains: land, maritime, air, space, cyber.
So we have selected a few examples. We'll start with new capabilities that are actually already entering the armed forces because, as you know, defense R and D takes a lot of time. So for the major new platforms, this will happen in the next years, but we already see capabilities that are supported by our projects. I'll start with an example in the area of sea mine risk clearance, something that is very actual now both in the North Sea, in the Black Sea increasing, but also in the Gulf. So here, results from two of our projects are already integrated in the new mine countermeasure vessels, which are already jointly procured by two navies of EU member states.
So, actually, not only ordered, but the first of its class is already here in Belgium in Zebruche. You can go and see the ship, actually, that integrates novel R and D solutions, how to detect and how to diffuse sea mines and underwater threats. And we understand that there is interest from other countries to follow. All these examples, of course, will enter the armed force of the member states. None of this will be procured by the EU, as such.
Another very interesting example, and this is the first ever major platform purely developed with EU funding, is the one on the left-hand side on the first line. We have a new light armored personnel carrier, which is not just a concept. It actually the hardware, the actual prototype is already not only there, but it's already being tested by the armed forces of one member state. For those of you who are aware of armored vehicles, basically, this is replacing the legacy platforms like the M113, the US platform, or the Soviet MTLB. So it'll it's a light armored vehicle that has multiple purposes.
So this is already actually being tested by the Armed Forces of Finland, and there is a clear potential for procurement. Another interesting example, we fund a number of already existing platforms, and we fund the further development of their capabilities. This is the third example I want to mention. This is the unmanned vehicle that you see in the desert background here. This is a platform called Temis, which is already in operation or used by more than 16 countries, including eight in NATO.
So with our projects, we help develop further the autonomy of the platform. So it's not that we are supporting the platform. Platform already exists since many years. But the fact that now it can operate much more autonomously is what we are supporting. This is already, interestingly, already in operational use in Ukraine.
So numerous of these units have been donated to Ukraine. They are used for missions like minefield clearing, casualty evacuation, logistics, bringing ammunition to the front, etcetera. So actually, already saving lives. Another interesting example, and this is the must that you see on the second line: these are autonomous surveillance and threat recognition solutions. So these are already existing platforms.
You can imagine this is a very big collapsing bus. It can go up to 15, 20 meters. And the sensors that are put on the top are supported by EU projects. I'm oversimplifying, of course, but, basically, the AI has autonomous surveillance capability. So this can be used, for example, for border protection.
This can be used to detect, for example, forest fires, but it is already operationally used in Ukraine. And with our funding, this gets additional autonomous capabilities to recognize, for example, to make the distinction between what is a deer in the woods and what is an infantryman. So, again, already something that is operationally used in member states and in Ukraine. We also have numerous projects in the area of cyber. We have taken one example here.
It's a cyber defense toolbox already used by the European Union institutions. It has already been used in the context of deployments under a CSDP mandate. We also support numerous drones, from small tactical ones to big strategic ones, but we have amongst these already projects like the example here you have, you see on the third line, a project where we already actually have sales of these platforms in member states and in Ukraine. And then the last one on this, on this slide, a very important, very strategic project. Also, where you see every day in the news now what happens not only in Ukraine but in The Gulf, you understand, of course, the relevance. It relates to European Union autonomy in the area of missile detection.
So we have two very strong projects, Odinsai and Odinsai two, which are about space based missile early warning, a capability currently on which EU purely depends on US capabilities. These projects are now basically the building block on which the bilateral French German drill initiative will build further. The drill initiative has two components, the space based early warning and the ground based early warning, and the space based early warning component is based on EDF projects, ODINS I, ODINS II. And on the second slide, we have put a few additional, if you can move, please, to the next slide, a few additional examples of concrete things that very soon will start entering the armed forces. I'll start with the European patrol corvette.
So it's a multipurpose vessel. We already have procurement contracts from four navies, a few member states, for around 20 ships expected to start delivering very soon, and likely there will be more to follow. So other additional EU member states are already interested in procuring this platform. And the interesting thing here is not the Corvette as such. Of course, corvettes are produced by many producers in Europe, but the fact that we managed to bring together a big majority of the main naval producers in Europe, the shipbuilders.
Another interesting example, the Eurodrone. First flight expected in 2027. Here, we already have a commitment from four member states to procure the systems, which means both the aircraft, but also the ground stations to manage them. There are also numerous other examples just for you to understand the polluter of EDF funded projects. We put here a few interesting examples.
Think about trauma simulation. So the way to train medical personnel, the way to train military personnel for basic medical skills. So project supported by the EDF supports the innovative virtual reality. So they're virtually in a military hospital where they can do they can train. They can see how it works in real life, where to take the hospitals, how to treat the patient in a very economical and efficient way.
And we see already interest from participating member states to procure this for their medical military services, and for general medical training of military staff. Another interesting project, this is the second one on the second line, it's about indoor soldier training. So, basically, this is a simulated environment where infantry soldiers, infantry squad, for example, they can train indoors, so much more cheaper and much more efficient to use digital weapons and simulators, for example, fighting vehicles. So fully submerged with screens around them. And we already know about one member state already intending to procure this for their armed forces.
Final two examples, a very interesting subject: underwater communication. As you know, communication underwater is very difficult. So, basically, the moment you send a diver to a mission, you lose contact, and you hope he comes back. Now we have an interesting project that allows the live tracking of divers' depth and a secure communication with the ground station and the divers. So something that is really truly innovative.
And there is an interesting potential, already procurement potential, not contracts yet, but potential for procurement by numerous EU member state navies. And as I mentioned, we support numerous projects related to drones, from small tactical drones to big strategic ones. Here, one additional example: projects Lotus and Actus. These are platforms that are used for surveillance and for reconnaissance where we already see the potential of member states procuring these platforms. So to conclude, defense R and D takes a lot of time, but we already see from the first projects under the EDIDP, the precursor program, and the first projects under EDF, actual capabilities entering the armed forces, actual capabilities already saving lives in Ukraine, and actual technologies, platforms, capabilities that are being used by the soldiers of our countries to keep Europe safe.
Thank you.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Thank you very much. Now I will give the floor to the colleague for a first round of questions, starting with the coordinators for two minutes, and we start with Helder for the EPP.
Hélder Sousa Silva
Thank you. Thank you, Kjell. Thank you. Thank you so much from the EDF and the DG DEFIS for this very important insights concerning the next MFF. It's my question, and the commission proposal for 2834 MFF is, at best, ambiguous.
Defense appears as a subheading of the European competitiveness fund, as you already said, alongside areas as varied as health, digital transition, and climate. At the same time, the commission has proposed the 131,000,000,000 for defense and space in the next MFF, an ambition this house has broadly welcomed, of course. Yet the tension between these two realities, a programmatic uncertain EDF, and a seemingly reinforced global envelope, raises a fundamental question. The question is the following. What is the actual programmatic architecture envisaged for defense research and development funding in the next MFF?
Will the EDF be renewed as a standalone recognizable instrument, or will it be absorbed into a broader industrial competitiveness logic that risks diluting its strategic specific specificity? And how does the commission intend to articulate the EDF with ADIP and with joint procurement instruments, so as to avoid precisely the kind of fragmentation that the EDF was created to address and to solve. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Thank you very much. And the next will be Sven from the S and T.
Sven Mikser
Thank you. Thank you very much for the presentations. Very interesting.
Well,
Sven Mikser
There was not too much about Ukraine in the presentations. We know that this year, the funding calls have been open to Ukrainian companies, including small and medium-sized companies. And I wonder whether it's sort of too early at this point to make sort of thorough assessment as to what works and what doesn't and why. But I remember recently when we had the senate committee visit to Ukraine, and we managed to also go to some of the defense industrial enterprises, and we were very much impressed by especially this sort of speed of the innovation cycle, how they get feedback from the battlefield. And then when there's a need for innovation, it actually makes so this sort of innovation makes its way back to the battlefield in a matter of a few weeks.
While we when the commission presented its defense simplification omnibus regulation to us and we started, we kicked off our work with a due urgency last summer. And now months have passed, and we are looking for suitable dates for next meetings. So I'm wondering whether the, I mean, the way we work in our peacetime environment and mentality, would it actually allow Ukraine to benefit from the new access to the EDF funds in such a way as to allow it to actually, among other goals, also to win the war against the aggressor. Thank you.
Mārtiņš Staķis
Right. Thank you. The one question goes for SMEs. You mentioned the high participation of SMEs, 43%, if I'm not mistaken. Is that 43% of all participants or is it 43% of the allocated funds?
And, what is the proportion of the funding received by SMEs? So this is the first question. Then there's on slide two, I was a little bit confused about the one thing you mentioned. And out of 210 projects, 17 are interoperable with NATO standards. It's a little bit confusing me.
In my understanding, all of them should be interoperable with their NATO standards. So could you a little bit elaborate more? And the third one is about the innovations. We had some cases in Europe that we, with the help of the European Defense Fund, developed really promising innovations and go to very good prototypes. But then if there's no orders following from the member states, sometimes they are simply sold to another country, some of
Mārtiņš Staķis
Is this still a case? Or if you receive the EDF funds, the innovation should stay in Europe? Otherwise, it might be that we are spending taxpayers' money for innovation, which actually does not stay in Europe. Thank you.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Thank you very much, Vakan Zuber. The floor is yours.
Speaker 34
Thank you very much. On the question next, MFF, will the defense sort of play a sub role in that large European competitiveness fund in which it is proposed to be embedded according to the commission's proposal? What we're trying to do and trying to ensure, and did already reflect in the proposal, is to make sure that the logics which we're pursuing now with the different programs stand alone at the moment. So we have the EDF, which is focusing on supporting common and joint R&D efforts. Then there is now EDIP, so following on to the Assab and the Idirpa program.
So supporting joint common procurement. And then on the other side, looking at the supply side and trying to also support ramping up of production capacities where needed, in relation also to the demand, which we will see. So what is now the idea is to bring all these three strengths together for the sake of also ensuring making sure that each of these logic finds its continuation under the European Competitiveness Fund, but also by bringing them together, and I guess that would have happened anyway, whether then the whole defense line or chain of contributions of funding contributions, two different activities would have probably been brought together into a single program in the future. So this kind of synergy is created between the different strengths, on the one hand, ensuring that they continue. So the key rules and the logic are there.
They are brought together. And yes, they are brought together also in a policy window with related where, I would say, synergies could be seen and could be created. In our case, that was now Space, where there are indeed overlaps and synergy areas, it's raw materials and security. But it is now, I think, also from the programming side and also from the negotiations to ensure that, of course, while synergies should be gained, and there is a lot to gain, we want to also see that our R and D activities are really then leading to, at the end, an industrial project outcome or product that is and then can be procured and ideally also supported through the procurement phase. So there are overlaps, which could also be beneficial. So we hope no, and I fully agree with you.
I think the EDF was a very successful program, and still is. And it should be ensured that this logic is properly pursued with the appropriate budget under the next MFF. What we can say and what we already said last time, what we can see is from the mere research side, we could easily meet the requests and the proposals put forward by Member States, this amounts easily to the double or 2.5x as much budget as we could consume for really very useful and valuable research and development projects in the defense domain. On Ukraine, indeed, so what we are trying to do, yes, Ukraine can already, to some extent, and Ukrainian entities participate in the EDF today. Then we took the measures that we could under the given regulation and existing regulation to ensure that they can, through certain mechanisms, participate also in R&D activities.
What we have also done is creating a new kind of scheme, which is called BraveTech EU, where we used CHF 50,000,000 of EDF funding. 50,000,000 is then coming from Brave One, so the kind of innovation driver in a Ukrainian entity driving defense innovation in Ukraine. And together with that €100,000,000, what we were setting up, and that's in the making, is really a new scheme that allows for also cooperation between EU entities, Ukrainian entities, allowing also the European entities to learn what is really to learn from the Ukrainian side, which is fast innovation, how do you test and bring lessons from the battlefield very quickly to industry, show them, and demonstrate where then innovation should be pursued and can also be implemented very quickly the way they do it. This may not be 100% implementable on our side, but that's what the scheme is trying to do, showing and bringing Ukrainian and European entities together for also allowing them to test their yes, technologies if they want to even in Ukraine under that scheme. So that's a bit what is built in already in the EDF. What is then now also, since the mini omnibus is the fact that we will associate Ukraine to the program.
There is, however, an association agreement that still needs to be negotiated. So this is on its way. We will see how fast that can be implemented. If that happens still this year, we could still at least include the Ukrainian entities and full participation in the EDF, hopefully in the last year. If not, that would at least also be an investment for the future.
And then finally, maybe on other programs where the Ukrainian participation is already fully foreseen, so that's the EDIT program, which we are currently preparing and where the work program is hopefully soon finalized, which provides for a proper support instrument, a program within the EDIT program geared at Ukrainian entities, Ukrainian needs where then out of the CHF 1,500,000,000, there will be CHF 300,000,000 dedicated to that UC Ukraine support instrument under ADIP. And then finally, and I hope I got your question right, so SMEs participation is indeed very high, but what the figure refers to was that 43% of the participants are the unique participants. When it comes to the funding, of course, it's not 43% that would go a little bit too far as to what also SMEs can then contribute to research and development, notably complex development programs. So the funding that is attributed or goes to SMEs amounts to 20% of the program's budget overall, so far. The relevance to NATO standards, when we said that, was meant that in all our projects, whenever it's relevant, we are referring to NATO standards where there are NATO standards.
And what I was saying or trying to say was that there are already 17 projects that not only refer somewhere as an element, but literally to the development standards in line with the NATO standards and take that into account and introduce them or take them into account in the development of a given project or technology. So that's what we meant when we referred to the 17 standardization projects. Think I hope I covered all aspects raised.
Hélder Sousa Silva
Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much for your clear answers. But I have raised another question related with the transition period between the actual and the next MFF. And having said that, the 2026, for example, work program launches calls with the deadlines running through September, and the projects selected will inevitably extend well beyond the end of the current MFF.
My question is concrete. What guarantees exist for the continuity of funding for projects approved in this final cycle that, by their very nature, will not have completed their development cycle until 2027? And, is there a transition mechanism in place, or are the industrial consortia investing now in preparing applications taking on real risk of midcourse funding disruption? It's a really important point and a critical point for the investors and especially for the SMEs, but for all of them. Thank you so much.
Mārtiņš Staķis
Yes. I had also a question about innovations, that how can we make sure that innovations stay in Europe and are not sold as a license to the other countries who then, you know, scale them up and make a profit.
Speaker 34
Good question, indeed. On the question on how to ensure the transition, well, that's what we were trying to do at the moment with the program we have with this multi-annual perspective, which I was introducing in the first slide. The whole idea of that is to already lay the path a bit of what we are going to do, hopefully, then in the research and development component of the next ECF. So what we're trying to do is now coming basically to the last year, and the 2027 work program is already under discussion, as you can imagine. What we're trying to do is in this multi-annual perspective to already lay the path a bit beyond in the first or even second year of the next MFF.
And then we do expect that, of course, all the work which we have done so far on the planning and the preparation, the work programs have all been done in close collaboration with Member States or the national MODs in the program committee. There will be, again, a program committee where, based on this informal planning, which we have already put forward, and the projects that are actually launched under '26 or '27, which will have a certain lifetime of several years, where we are sure that member states also in the program committee will come back with the request to pursue those projects that really meet their interest as reflected in this multiannual programming. So there is nothing formal, and no guarantee. But I think with the planning which we have now with the multi-annual planning instrument, that will be very helpful to also guide the way into the future under the next MFF. And then, innovation.
Yes, what we did so far under the EDF is this UDIS innovation scheme, where we are trying not only on investing at the moment up to 20%, 24% of our annual budget on the EDF on innovation measures. So really trying to see that not only do we give start ups, smaller companies, scale ups, SMEs the chance to develop their technologies, mature them, and ripen them. But very often, what also SMEs want to ensure and want to see is somehow that their technology, they find their way and their position in larger-scale corporation projects. So the large majority of these 45% of SME participants are actually already integrated and work with larger primes in their larger scale projects related to capability development, which is good because that's what we want. We want to see them beyond the R and D projects, integrated in the supply chains of industry, and that actually works really well.
The way we see it from the past is that this cooperation and integration of SMEs in larger industrial corporations or consortia induce beyond the duration of an R and D project. And what we, of course, also would like to see with the other strengths, which we are having, the other intervention logics, notably EDIP, where we would then also like to see in the future that, for example, outcomes of EDF projects are then sort of treated as a priority also in joint procurement projects launched by Member States. We can't force them. But if what we do under the EDF is interesting, it will also be for the MODs, there should also be normally an interest of those MODs to procure and to keep it in the country or in the EU. Right.
I'll stop here.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Any other questions? Thank you very much. We are really looking forward to what's going on, and so we are happy if you come to our committee to tell us. So we wish you success. I think it's very important for the whole Europe, and we could see what happens all around.
So thank you very much, colleague, for your interest, for your time, and our next meeting will take place on the 14th, April 2026. So thank you very much, and a first day. It's a nice weekend. A little bit early. But, anyway, a sunny day.
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