{"id":945,"date":"2026-03-30T11:44:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T11:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/945\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T11:44:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T11:44:08","slug":"eu-commission-greenlights-e1-5-billion-defence-initiative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/945\/","title":{"rendered":"EU Commission greenlights \u20ac1.5 billion defence initiative"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The European Commission approved an initiative worth \u20ac1.5 billion ($1.7 billion) aimed at boosting European and Ukrainian defence industries.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Under the programme, defence industries in European Union countries, Norway and Ukraine &#8220;can seize funding opportunities to strengthen defence cooperation and ramp up production,&#8221; said EU Defence Commissioner Andrius Kubilius on Monday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Allocated money will be made available as grants in the years 2026-2027.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The aim of the initiative is to strengthen the technological foundation, innovation and collaboration to better face current and future challenges, the commission said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">More than \u20ac700 million are to be spent on increasing the production of &#8220;key defence components and products, including counter-drones systems, missiles and ammunition&#8221; in the EU and in Ukraine.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The initiative is allocating \u20ac325 million, for &#8220;ambitious collaborative&#8221; defence projects, mainly aimed at the broader EU though bids are also open to Norway and Ukraine.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The plan earmarks \u20ac240 million for joint procurement, including counter-drone, air and missile defence and ground and naval combat systems.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Defence start-ups and other smaller defence companies are to receive \u20ac100 million in equity support through the fund.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The first round of calls for proposals is to start on Tuesday, the commission said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The European Commission approved an initiative worth \u20ac1.5 billion ($1.7 billion) aimed at boosting European and Ukrainian defence&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":946,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1130,1133,1131,39,1129,258,40,1132,1134,28],"class_list":{"0":"post-945","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-andrius-kubilius","9":"tag-defence-companies","10":"tag-defence-industries","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-eu-commissioner","13":"tag-european-parliament","14":"tag-european-union","15":"tag-european-union-countries","16":"tag-missile-defence","17":"tag-ukraine"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945","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=945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}