Negotiations for EU defence industry programme likely to face delay

7 months ago 25

Despite the European Commission’s hopes to launch a brand new European Defence Industry Programme (EDIP) by 2025, the first rounds of negotiations and exchanges have pushed the deadline by at least six months, people involved in the discussions told Euractiv.

“The text will never be finished by January 2025,” one EU diplomat said, referring to the European Commission’s hopes of a brand new industrial policy scheme to revive the bloc’s defence industry.

Commission officials hoped that EU member states would wrap up amending the text by the summer before the new European Parliament is elected and sworn in.

According to the initial plan, it would then have gone to EU lawmakers before a final round of arbitration in the autumn and be finished by January 2025, when the new College of Commissioners would be in place to vote on it.

This timeline would have seen the current Internal Market Commissioner in charge of defence industries, Thierry Breton, present for most of the negotiation of the text, before a new college joins.

EDIP is Breton’s legacy legislative piece in the series of emergency programmes set up following Russia’s war on Ukraine, in an attempt to revive the bloc’s defence industry so it is fit for war-time production needs.

“There is no urgency, this time around,” another person involved in the discussion said.

“Even if the Hungarian presidency starting in July wants to go as far as possible on the file, it is a very long text and there is a lot to discuss,” they said, adding the finishing line will not be crossed before the summer of 2025, six months later than pitched.

According to them, new members of the European Parliament might want to play hardball at the beginning of the mandate and will lack the expertise to speed up negotiations.

As evidence of EU member states’ wish to carefully study the proposed text, the Council has set up experts’ meetings for negotiations two weeks apart, instead of once a week as for previous programmes.

“It is a long text, and we are looking at the defence industry, member states need time to look at it carefully,” the first EU diplomat also said.

Two other sources questioned how the governance of this industrial policy scheme and subsidy fund would work out.

They pointed out the need for “coherence”, while governments do not want to give up on their prerogatives in military planning as they are wary of the European Commission’s role in making decisions or as an advisory body next to the intergovernmental European Defence Agency (EDA).

As expected, other sensitive questions relate to the Commission’s access to supply chain-related information, mapping of capacities, right to purchase on behalf of the member states, how the critical supplies reserves would be handled, the right to requisition production line for defence purposes in case of crisis, and association of Ukraine’s industry.

EDIP’s finish line being moved to mid-2025 is, however, coherent and in line with other major datelines in the EU defence industry programmes’ updates.

The reforms of the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) and the European Defence Fund (EDF) are also planned for next year.

By this time, the results of the short-term programmes for joint procurement and boosting ammunition production will have also shown their first results, giving lawmakers a first overview of the successes and failures of the EU’s defence industry policies.

[Edited by Alexandra Brzozowski/Alice Taylor]