Committee on Security and Defence Ordinary meeting

3 septembre 2026

The Chair mandates the study for SEDE, then Professor Fiott sets out the strategic role of defence SMEs in the EU DTIB, using lessons from Ukraine to frame their innovation potential and the core financial, regulatory and political obstacles they face.

Committee on Security and Defence Ordinary meeting

Name: Committee on Security and Defence Ordinary meeting
Uploaded: 2026-09-03T08:00:00+00:00

26:29 - 27:13

Intervenant 1

Okay, dear colleagues, the next point on the agenda is a presentation of a study of advancing the inclusion of SMEs and the EU's defense technological and industrial base with Professor Dr. Daniel Fiott. I would like to remind you that SEDE coordinators requested the study to support our work on strengthening the role of defense SMEs in the EU, such as in EDF and ASAP instruments and in particular for the upcoming own-initiative report on this topic. So I would now like to give the floor to Daniel for 10 minutes to present the study and then you have the possibilities to ask. Please, the floor is yours.

27:13 - 30:51

Intervenant 2

Yeah, thank you, Chair, and good morning, everybody. Thanks also for commissioning the study and for allowing me to come and present some of the main themes from the report. I think everyone has access to a copy of it already. And maybe beginning straight away about the logic of the report and as the title, I think, is very clear, the question I was given was to see and to analyze the role of SMEs in the EDTIB, which I guess most people in this room will already recognize is a rather important question, not least because of the geopolitical context Europe is faced and also the growing importance of the European defense industrial base, but also looking at some of the experiences from Russia's war on the Ukraine and the role of SMEs and the role they've played as well in Ukraine's ability to defend Ukrainian territory.

And in that context, there has been a much greater use of new technologies, dual-use technologies, and a rather, I would say, set of different processes that enable the Ukrainians to get these technologies faster into the field. So this was a little bit the inspiration I had at the beginning of the study, but as the study also makes very clear, which is the importance of SMEs themselves. So we already recognize that SMEs already play quite a considerable role, not only in the European economy more generally, but also in defense specifically. So they're already part of existing defense supply chains, and they play a critical role in enabling technologies to be integrated within the work of mid-cap firms and also the prime firms, so the higher tier. So there's already an integrated tier system of firms at the European level.

Why that's important also is that SMEs are, if one tries to define it, but we don't really have the time to define what an SME is, in general terms, thinking about the role they play, SMEs can be considerably important when it comes to the sourcing and manufacturing of individual components and parts, but also, and that I think is very, very important, the role that SMEs play in terms of the innovation potential of the production and development of defense systems. That is increasingly important today because, as we know, we are engaged already in a form of technological revolution with technologies like artificial intelligence, the use and rise of autonomous systems, cyber defense, cyber capabilities, space technologies. If you zoom out and you look at the technology suites that SMEs are involved in and where innovation rests in Europe, SMEs play a considerable, considerably important role within the defense market. However, one of the challenges, and there are many challenges facing SMEs, but one of the main questions that we try to tackle in this study is how best to go beyond what is the existing structure of the market at the moment with SMEs to also be able in Europe to benefit from new innovators, whether that's in the defense or the civil or the dual-use sectors, that they also have an opportunity to integrate their technologies and to sell their technologies throughout the European market for the benefit of defense. Now, this is not simply a question, and the report makes that very clear, this is not simply a question of developing new technologies, although that is certainly an important part of it.

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