The Chief Executive of the European Defence Agency (EDA), André Denk, explained, on Wednesday 13 May that the aim is to have a complete picture of a strengthened Agency in September.
The day before, European defence ministers validated the first phase of the strengthening of the EDA, which mainly aims to strengthen the Agency’s innovation and experimentation functions, as well as its acquisition capabilities (see EUROPE 13867/1).
This first phase - covering the year 2026 - also aims to increase the EDA’s resources from 2026, while reorganising internal resources. “That means that we reallocate existing stuff here in the Agency to let us call them new priorities, to those things that matter now”, Mr Denk explained to a small group of journalists, including Agence Europe. He pointed out that a letter amending the budget still had to be sent to defence ministers to obtain their approval.
“We are talking about 19 extra positions, which in principle does not sound a lot, but it cumulates to an increase that was already decided last year. So the EDA, in December 2025, had 235 colleagues and (...) at the end of this year will have 50 more”, explained Mr Denk.
The other two phases of EDA strengthening - phase 2 in 2027 and phase 3 in 2028 - will be discussed in greater detail with the Member States in June and July. “We will bring this to the Steering Board in September so that we have a full picture about EDA 2.0 in September”, explained the Executive Director.
Alignment with priority capability areas. Mr Denk also pointed out that the Agency had aligned its work with the nine priority capability areas agreed by the Heads of State or Government of the Member States in October (see EUROPE 13737/2). “What we did in EDA was to articulate our working groups with the Member States in a way that we perfectly support these nine priority capability areas”, he explained, adding that this had led to proposals for European Defence Projects of Common Interest (EDPCIs).
“It is now eight EDPCIs that are on the table of the Commission. And now it is negotiated, it is defined, and then this will lead to very concrete projects”, he explained, citing in particular a maritime EDPCI which he described as “very promising ” and which “can be broken down to 40 different projects”. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)