On Thursday 19 March, Sylvia Kainz-Huber, Head of Unit for Defence Industrial Programming Coordination at the European Commission’s DG DEFIS, called for the European Defence Fund (EDF) to be continued under the next Multiannual Financial Framework.
“The European Defence Fund was, and still is, very successful and its logic should be pursued with an appropriate budget under the next MFF”, she stressed at a hearing of the European Parliament’s Committee on Security and Defence. “From a research point of view, we could easily obtain, for Member States’ requests and proposals, double or even 2.5 times the budget needed for genuinely useful and valuable research and development projects in the defence field”, she explained.
Ms Kainz-Huber explained that of the €7.3 billion available under the EDF, the Commission had committed €6.4 billion to joint defence research and development projects. “The budget available under the EDF has enabled it to become one of the top three providers of R&D investment in Europe”, she praised (see EUROPE 13631/2).
“We currently have 224 collaborative R&D projects underway, involving 1,650 unique participants”, explained Ms Kainz-Huber. The 2025 call for projects attracted “growing interest, with a record number of 410 proposals submitted, representing a 37% increase on previous calls and a threefold increase since the launch in 2021”.
And some projects already have concrete applications. For example, a light armoured personnel carrier is already being tested by some Finnish military crews, and a Belgian ship has a new system for combating underwater mines.
While the 2026 call for projects is open until September, the 2027 work programme is already under discussion. “Our aim, in this multi-year perspective, is to lay the foundations for the first or even second year of the next MFF”, she added.
She said she hoped that, for projects launched in 2026 or 2027, which have a lifespan of several years, the Member States would come back to the Commission to request the continuation of projects that correspond to their needs. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)