Committee on Security and Defence Ordinary meeting

Name: Committee on Security and Defence Ordinary meeting
Uploaded: 2026-06-03T08:15:00+00:00
Duration: 945 s

03:50 - 05:14

Speaker 1

So, colleagues, welcome. The first point is the adoption of the agenda.

If there are no amendments, the agenda of the meeting can be adopted. So now we will continue immediately. Sorry. I would like to inform you that in line with Rule 220 of Parliament's Rules of Procedure, the records of decisions of the SEDE coordinators' meeting of 20th April 2026 by written procedure and of 7th May have been uploaded on the SEDE intranet and will be attached to the minutes of this meeting. Now I submit for approval the minutes of the meeting held on the 14th and 15th April 2026.

Do we have any comments? If there are no comments, the minutes are deemed approved. So, dear colleagues, we now proceeding to the vote on the SEDE opinion to the Commission's proposal related to the Union Civil Protection Mechanism and Union support for health emergency preparedness and response. This will be an electronic vote, so please have your voting cards ready. Are you ready?

Yeah, wonderful. Before proceeding to the vote, I would like to briefly give the floor to rapporteur Rainis Poznak for one minute. Rainis, the floor is yours.

05:14 - 06:07

Speaker 2

Thank you, Chair. First of all, of course, I would like to thank the SEDE secretariat and all the staff from all the political groups and, of course, shadow rapporteurs for very smooth, constructive and productive work, because what we are voting today is not just a technical update of 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 cyberattacks, disinformation, sabotage and the deliberate targeting of critical infrastructure. This is exactly why this report matters and I kindly ask you support it. Thank you.

06:07 - 08:19

Speaker 1

Thank you very much, Rainis. I can see that we have clearly enough members to meet the quorum for a vote. And before we proceed, we need to check if the voting system is working correctly. Please insert your voting cards and we will now have a test vote on a very, very random question: do you like pineapple on your pizza? So, the vote is open.

Okay, the vote is closed. Yes, and the most people don't like it, me too. So, colleagues. Yeah, it's really a random question. So, colleagues, now we are coming to the draft opinion on the proposal for regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council of the Union Civil Protection Mechanism and Union support for health emergency preparedness and response and repealing decisions number 1313/2013/EU.

So now we coming to the first amendment by hand. Who is in favor? Who is against?

Abstention adopted. So we are coming to the final vote by roll call vote. The vote is open. The vote is closed. And it's clear adopted.

Thank you very much. So wonderful. These screens are just awful because...

11:41 - 14:23

Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann

First of all, regarding the interpretation, it is available in the following languages: German, English, French, Italian, Dutch, Greek, Spanish, Portuguese, Finnish, Swedish, Czech, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Hungarian, Maltese, Polish, Slovak, Slovenian, Bulgarian, Romanian, and Croatian. I would also like to remind you that the meeting is being webstreamed on the Parliament's website. And finally, I would like to inform you that the draft agenda has been distributed and is now adopted. We can now move on to the first item on our agenda, which is the adoption of the minutes of the meeting of the 24th and 25th of January 2024. Are there any comments or objections to these minutes?

I see none, so the minutes are adopted. The next item is the Chair's announcements. I would like to inform you that the coordinators met on the 20th of February and took several decisions regarding the future work of the subcommittee. These decisions have been communicated to you and are also available on the SEDE website. If there are no objections, these decisions are considered approved.

We now come to the main part of our meeting today, which is a public hearing on the implementation of the Permanent Structured Cooperation, PESCO. As you know, PESCO was launched in December 2017 with the aim of strengthening cooperation between EU member states in the field of security and defence. Since then, several rounds of projects have been launched, covering a wide range of areas, from military mobility to cyber defence and maritime security. However, several challenges remain, including the need to ensure the effective implementation of these projects and to increase the level of ambition of PESCO. Today, we have invited several experts to share their views on the current state of play of PESCO and the challenges and opportunities ahead.

I am pleased to welcome our first speaker, Mr. Jean-Pierre Maulny, Deputy Director of the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs, IRIS. Mr. Maulny, you have the floor for ten minutes.