Recognising the progress made, the European Council is expected to call, at its summit on 18 and 19 June, for “renewed urgent action” to achieve the EU’s defence preparedness objective “swiftly and on a large scale, through a comprehensive approach that includes reducing strategic dependencies”.
The European Council should therefore call for the increase in defence spending to continue and be accompanied by greater efforts to “invest better and faster together”.
Furthermore, it should call for the continuation of initiatives aimed at protecting Europe’s eastern flank and to invite the European Defence Agency (EDA) to continue supporting Member States in coordinating work on priority capabilities.
European leaders are expected to reaffirm the urgent need to strengthen Europe’s defence technology and industrial base and to emphasise that further efforts are required to adapt and strengthen production capacities and to ensure, through innovation, the transformation of the defence industry, which is “essential to achieving the objective of operational preparedness”. In their view, the Member States must ensure that the capability and industrial dimensions are closely aligned within the framework of capability coalitions.
Leaders should call on the Commission, the European Council and the Member States to make full use of the instruments available for capability development and industrial reinforcement, and to take the necessary measures as a matter of urgency to implement the SAFE instrument and the European Defence Industry Programme (EDIP).
The co-legislators could also be invited to reach an agreement swiftly on the omnibus text concerning defence preparedness, and, by the end of the year, on the AGILE programme and military mobility. The European Council is expected to explain that it is looking forward to the Commission’s new proposals aimed at simplifying sensitive defence and security procurement.
Strongly condemning the violation of Member States’ airspace and hybrid attacks (see EUROPE 13874/23), the European Council should emphasise the importance of safeguarding the EU’s borders and continuing efforts to strengthen resilience, improve preparedness, protect critical infrastructure and prevent, deter and counter hybrid attacks.
Read the draft conclusions: https://aeur.eu/f/m53 (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)