{"id":85867,"date":"2026-07-03T16:05:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T16:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/85867\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T16:05:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T16:05:10","slug":"european-commission-attempts-to-spur-eu-defence-teamwork-with-five-new-major-projects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/85867\/","title":{"rendered":"European Commission attempts to spur EU defence teamwork with five new major projects"},"content":{"rendered":"

The European Commission has unveiled a slate of new large-scale defence projects to help member states strengthen their defence capabilities through teamwork.<\/p>\n

Presented on Friday, the five projects focus on drones and counter-drone systems, maritime and seabed defence, space, air power and missile defence.<\/p>\n

Special emphasis will be placed on beefing up the continent’s eastern flank. A series of drone incursions<\/a> has lately prompted questions about how the nine countries spanning from Finland to Bulgaria can strengthen their ability to deter and respond to potential threats.<\/p>\n

The Commission has allocated \u20ac325 million to support the establishment and deployment of the projects, with 18 member states participating in all of them and Ukraine participating in four.<\/p>\n

There is a real need to move faster, produce together and invest in security. And that is exactly what we are doing.<\/p>\n

The announcement follows renewed warnings from the European Defence Agency (EDA) that member states are continuing to buy military equipment largely on their own rather than together.<\/p>\n

According to a recent EDA publication, collaborative procurement accounted for just 24 percent of defence investment in 2025 and remains \u201cunevenly distributed\u201d across countries and capability areas.<\/p>\n

The agency said national approaches still dominate procurement decisions, while equipment acquisition and replacement cycles remain “largely unsynchronised”, limiting opportunities for joint investment.<\/p>\n

Last month, the long-hailed Franco-German Future Combat Air System fighter jet development program was scrapped after major commercial disputes between the two major companies behind it, Dassault and Airbus.<\/p>\n

Despite this, European Investment Bank President Nadia Calvi\u00f1o last week trumpeted a record-breaking \u20ac3 billion loan<\/a> for aerospace giant Airbus to boost the company’s commercial projects. The loan shows how Europe is “ramping up its capacity and strategic autonomy”, she said.<\/p>\n

European Commissioner for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy, Henna Virkkunen, said Europe must accelerate joint production and investment in defence, in turn demanding an injection of cash.<\/p>\n

“There is a real need to move faster, produce together and invest in security. And that is exactly what we are doing,” she said.<\/p>\n

Defence Commissioner Andrius Kubilius said the five joint projects will help improve the EU’s military readiness while strengthening Europe’s strategic autonomy.<\/p>\n

“With a combined funding ambition of around \u20ac190 billion by 2036, they will play a key role in strengthening the member states’ capabilities and keep Europe and Europeans safe,” he said.<\/p>\n

The Commission’s announcement comes days before the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey.<\/p>\n

The meeting is expected to focus on how allies intend to meet the alliance’s new defence spending target of 3.5 percent of GDP by 2035, a commitment spearheaded by US President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The European Commission has unveiled a slate of new large-scale defence projects to help member states strengthen their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":85868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2385],"tags":[23589,45706,256,6286,797,1134,45707,667,666],"class_list":["post-85867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-european-commission","tag-defence-capabilities","tag-defence-projects","tag-european-commission","tag-european-defence-agency","tag-member-states","tag-missile-defence","tag-projects-focus","tag-the-commission","tag-the-european-commission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}