Committee on Security and Defence Ordinary meeting
4 June 2026
Contents updated on 4 Jun 2026
Legend
Transcript markers
- text Sentence being played
- text Search result
- text Intervention cited by the link you opened
Click a sentence to play the video from that moment. Select text to quote it with the speaker, timestamp and link.
More options
Official source
Offset
Transcript offset
0s
Text size
Export
Live capture
Versions of this video
Transcripts may differ slightly from one version to another.
SEDE European Parliament
Follow its sittings09:14 - 10:12
Speaker 1
So, dear colleagues, we will now discuss progress in EU support to collaborative research and development for defense products and technologies. Mr. Arbault, Director of Defense Industrial Program at DG DEFIS, will present the results of the latest call for projects under the Commission's 2023 work program of the European Defense Fund. So, François, could you outline the main changes and trends which mark the results compared to the previous work programs? What are the key takeaways regarding success rates, participation of SMEs, geographical distribution of project participants, and cooperation with Ukraine? And also, we look forward to learning from you how the new EDF fund projects will contribute to defense readiness 2030.
So, the floor is yours, about 15 minutes, and please.
10:12 - 15:04
Speaker 2
Thank you very much, Madam Chair and honorable members, good morning. Delighted to be again before you today as part of the scrutiny process. You know, there is examination procedure and in as part of that, of course, the Parliament is being informed of what the projects are that are being selected.
I have to say we like very much the way you phrased the subject of that discussion today because this is, I think, a unique opportunity to exemplify very concretely how the EDF, now as part of the panoply of industrial programs that we are rolling out, contributes very tangibly year by year, notably on the collective ambition displayed by the EU and as a kind of proxy of that, for instance, the flagships that were proposed by the Commission on the 16th of October. So starting with precisely that angle, just of course I will also give, as you mentioned, key facts on EDF 25.
So I will focus on that millesime but not only. So the readiness flagships, recall that there are four initial European readiness flagships that have been proposed by the Commission as part of its defense readiness roadmap 2030 that was tabled in October 25. Four of them, the Eastern Flank Watch, which seeks to establish an integrated multi-domain defense of the eastern border of the EU, complementary of course and fully compatible articulated with NATO's regional plans.
We have second, the European drone defense initiative, aiming at a rapidly deployable European drone and counter-drone set of capabilities. We know the relevance of this, no need to dwell on that. The European air shield, aiming at establishing an overarching systems of systems covering the entire air and missile defense spectrum and again, no need to mention that, but always better to mention it nonetheless, fully interoperable with NATO. And finally, the European space shield, again, a comprehensive European system of defense space capabilities, protecting and building on the EU space assets and national capabilities, of course. This is meant to help closing the capability gaps which we know exist, to accelerate defense investments across Europe and guide the EU's progress towards full defense readiness and this no later by 2030.
This is meant to be delivered very much by the capability coalitions which have been shaping up. Now we are speaking of nine priority capability areas fostering a lot of discussion across the member states, but also this is meant to be powered up by the upcoming European defense projects of common interest. So this for the flagships. Now coming back to the machinery of the EDF.
This what you see here and I won't go into detail is the typical synthetic view of the work program that we publish every year that lists all the topics that we are asking industry via partnerships to deliver on what we need in terms of technologies and capabilities. I don't go into the details because the way I want to present this next slide is to focus for instance as an example on the European defense drone initiative. To show to you and this is you know we are magnifying the part of the work program 25 which shows that already in that annual work program we have four categories of actions and inside that four topics that are typically relevant for the European drones initiative. For instance we ask industry and RTOs to work on autonomous triage and evacuation.
So how to use drones basically unmanned, you know, uncrewed vehicles to actually help, you know, evacuation. How can we foster the robustness of autonomous vehicles from a cyber angle? How can we work on propulsion systems that are relevant for next-gen rotorcrafts, including for the sake of drones production? How can we, for instance, also incentivize the production of drone-based mass munitions?
This for an amount of grants of more than 100 million euros. So you see that those elements are not disconnected. We have, we are discussing with the Member States topics which we put to the market and we see delivered capabilities, technologies that are supportive of what will be the, you know, European drone initiative. But also, and this is the next slide, we don't stop it, you know, on a given year. So if you take again the prism, the angle of drones, you will see that we've actually inventorized 29 topics since the very first year of the EDF in 2021.
Ask anything about this video — I analyse its transcript to answer.