Category: Europe

MIL-OSI Europe: MOTION FOR A RESOLUTION on the white paper on the future of European defence – B10-0146/2025

Source: European Parliament

Rasa Juknevičienė, Nicolás Pascual de la Parte, Riho Terras, Michael Gahler, David McAllister, Sebastião Bugalho, Andrzej Halicki
on behalf of the PPE Group

B10‑0146/2025

European Parliament resolution on the white paper on the future of European defence

(2025/2565(RSP))

The European Parliament,

– having regard to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU),

– having regard to Title V of the Treaty on European Union (TEU), in particular Chapter Two, Section Two thereof on provisions on the common security and defence policy (CSDP),

– having regard to the Versailles Declaration adopted on 11 March 2022 at the informal meeting of Heads of State or Government,

– having regard to the Strategic Compass for Security and Defence – For a European Union that protects its citizens, values and interests and contributes to international peace and security, which was approved by the Council on 21 March 2022 and endorsed by the European Council on 24 March 2022,

– having regard to the national security strategies of the Member States,

– having regard to the Civilian CSDP Compact – Towards more effective civilian missions, approved by the Council on 22 May 2023,

– having regard to Council Decision (CFSP) 2022/1968 of 17 October 2022 on a European Union Military Assistance Mission in support of Ukraine (EUMAM Ukraine)[1],

– having regard to Council Decision (CFSP) 2024/890 of 18 March 2024 amending Decision (CFSP) 2021/509 establishing a European Peace Facility [2],

– having regard to Regulation (EU) 2019/452 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 March 2019 establishing a framework for the screening of foreign direct investments into the Union [3],

– having regard to Regulation (EU) 2021/697 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 29 April 2021 establishing the European Defence Fund and repealing Regulation (EU) 2018/1092 [4],

– having regard to Regulation (EU) 2023/1525 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 July 2023 on supporting ammunition production (ASAP)[5],

– having regard to Regulation (EU) 2023/2418 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 October 2023 on establishing an instrument for the reinforcement of the European defence industry through common procurement (EDIRPA)[6],

– having regard to Regulation (EU) 2024/1252 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 April 2024 establishing a framework for ensuring a secure and sustainable supply of critical raw materials and amending Regulations (EU) No 168/2013, (EU) 2018/858, (EU) 2018/1724 and (EU) 2019/1020 [7],

– having regard to the Commission proposal of 18 April 2023 for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council laying down measures to strengthen solidarity and capacities in the Union to detect, prepare for and respond to cybersecurity threats and incidents (COM(2023)0209),

– having regard to the joint communication from the Commission and the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy of 21 February 2025 on an EU Action Plan on Cable Security (JOIN(2025)0009),

– having regard to the joint communication from the Commission and the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy of 10 March 2023 on a European Union Space Strategy for Security and Defence (JOIN(2023)0009),

– having regard to Commission Recommendation (EU) 2023/2113 of 3 October 2023 on critical technology areas for the EU’s economic security for further risk assessment with Member States [8],

– having regard to the joint communication from the Commission and the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy of 10 November 2022 entitled ‘Action plan on military mobility 2.0’ (JOIN(2022)0048),

– having regard to the joint communication from the Commission and the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy of 18 May 2022 on the Defence Investment Gaps Analysis and Way Forward (JOIN(2022)0024),

– having regard to the joint communication from the Commission and the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy of 10 March 2023 on the update of the EU Maritime Security Strategy and its Action Plan entitled ‘An enhanced EU Maritime Security Strategy for evolving maritime threats’ (JOIN(2023)0008),

– having regard to the joint communication from the Commission and the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy of 5 March 2024 entitled ‘A new European Defence Industrial Strategy: Achieving EU readiness through a responsive and resilient European Defence Industry’ (JOIN(2024)0010),

– having regard to the report by the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy of 20 June 2024 entitled ‘Common Foreign and Security Policy Report – Our priorities in 2024’,

– having regard to the political guidelines for the next European Commission 2024-2029 by Ursula von der Leyen entitled ‘Europe’s choice’, published on 18 July 2024,

– having regard to the report by Enrico Letta entitled ‘Much more than a market’, published in April 2024, and in particular the section thereof entitled ‘Promoting peace and enhancing security: towards a Common Market for the defence industry’,

– having regard to the report by Mario Draghi of 9 September 2024 on the future of European competitiveness and in particular Chapter Four thereof on increasing security and reducing dependencies,

– having regard to the report by Sauli Niinistö of 30 October 2024 entitled ‘Safer Together: Strengthening Europe’s Civilian and Military Preparedness and Readiness’,

– having regard to the North Atlantic Treaty of 1949,

– having regard to the Madrid Summit Declaration adopted by NATO heads of state and government at the North Atlantic Council meeting in Madrid on 29 June 2022,

– having regard to the NATO 2022 Strategic Concept and to the NATO Vilnius Summit Communiqué issued by NATO heads of state and government at the North Atlantic Council meeting in Vilnius on 11 July 2023,

– having regard to the joint declarations on EU-NATO cooperation signed on 8 July 2016, 10 July 2018 and 10 January 2023,

– having regard to the ninth progress report on the implementation of the common set of proposals endorsed by EU and NATO Councils on 6 December 2016 and 5 December 2017, submitted jointly by the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and the NATO Secretary General to the Council of the EU and the NATO Council on 13 June 2024,

– having regard to the Washington Summit Declaration issued by the NATO heads of state and government participating in the North Atlantic Council meeting in Washington on 10 July 2024,

– having regard to Ukraine’s victory plan presented by the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to the European Council on 17 October 2024,

– having regard to the speeches and statements made at the Munich Security Conference on 14-16 February 2025,

– having regard to the statements made at the Leaders Meeting on Ukraine, held in London on 2 March 2025,

– having regard to the temporary halt of all United States military aid to Ukraine,

– having regard to the statement by the President of the Commission of 4 March 2025 on the defence package, the ReArm Europe Plan,

– having regard to Rule 55 of its Rules of Procedure,

A. whereas the security situation in Europe has seen an unprecedented deterioration over the past years; whereas there is a common understanding that Europe needs to be able to effectively address European security challenges and achieve a state of defence readiness;

B. whereas Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has been a watershed moment in European history; whereas Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine is widely recognised as an attack on the European peace order established after the Second World War and on the global order as a whole;

C. whereas despite previous signs and warnings, many countries have not taken the necessary defence measures; whereas the goal of committing 2 % of gross domestic product (GDP) to defence spending agreed by NATO members in 2014 is still not being met by all NATO members in the EU; whereas the gap between the 2 % goal and the actual defence spending by EU Member States amounts to EUR 1 770 billion over the 2006-2022 period [9]; whereas in 2024, 16 EU Member States that are also NATO allies were expected to exceed NATO’s 2 % defence investment guideline, compared to only nine in 2023;

D. whereas as a result of these investment gaps, numerous reports, notably the Defence Investment Gaps Analysis of May 2022, have analysed a worrying capability gap in European defence;

E. whereas the Draghi report highlighted a funding need of EUR 500 billion in European defence for the next decade and highlights a combination of structural weaknesses affecting the competitiveness of the EU’s defence technological and industrial base (EDTIB), and identifies fragmentation, insufficient public defence investment and limited access to financing as obstacles to a capable EDTIB; whereas the lending policy of the European Investment Bank (EIB) excludes the financing of ammunition and weapons, as well as equipment or infrastructure exclusively dedicated to military and police use;

F. whereas the Niinistö report underlines the fact that the EU and its Member States are not yet fully prepared for the most severe cross-sectoral or multidimensional crisis scenarios, especially given the further deteriorating environment outside of the EU; whereas it insists that this preparedness is necessary for the EU and its Member States to signal to potential adversaries that they will not be able to outlast the EU; whereas it deplores the fact that the EU lacks a common plan in the event of armed aggression and underlines that the EU needs to rethink the way it defines its security;

G. whereas Russia’s continued armament efforts and its cooperation with other authoritarian powers on armaments, vastly surpassing European stocks and production capacities, pose the most serious and unprecedented threat to world peace as well as to the security and territory of the EU and its Member States; whereas the Russian regime is strengthening its ties in particular with the autocratic leaderships of China, Iran and North Korea in order to achieve its objectives;

H. whereas the EU is also facing the most diverse and complex range of non-military threats since its creation, exacerbated by Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, including foreign information manipulation and interference, cyberattacks, attacks against underwater infrastructure, economic pressures, food and energy blackmailing, instrumentalisation of migration and subversive political influence; whereas the EU should take these kind of threats seriously in its defence and security policies;

I. whereas the recent actions and statements by the US administration have further increased concerns about the future stance of the US vis-à-vis Russia, NATO and the security of Europe;

J. whereas the EU’s security environment has deteriorated not only in eastern Europe, but also in countries in the EU’s southern neighbourhood partnership and beyond;

K. whereas the disastrous impact of past or ongoing wars, instability, insecurity, poverty and climate change in the Sahel region, north-eastern Africa and Libya poses serious risks to the EU’s security and its economic and trade interests; whereas the instability and insecurity in the southern neighbourhood and the Sahel region are closely interlinked with and remain an ongoing challenge for EU external border management and mitigation of illegal migration;

L. whereas European security is linked to stability on the African continent, and the growing presence of non-European actors is testament to the lack of sufficient security and diplomatic engagement in the region to effectively counter the challenges and protect its strategic interests;

M. whereas the Black Sea has shifted from a secondary to a primary military theatre for the EU and NATO, and, alongside the Baltic Sea, has become a pivotal strategic region for European security in countering the Russian threat;

N. whereas the Arctic region is becoming increasingly important in terms of economic development and transport, while at the same time facing challenges linked to climate change and militarisation, as well as those resulting from increasing geopolitical competition and migration;

O. whereas China, driven by the ambition to become a global superpower, is eroding the rules-based international order by increasingly pursuing assertive foreign and hostile economic and competition policies and exporting dual-use goods deployed by Russia on the battlefield against Ukraine, thereby threatening European security and interests; whereas China is also investing tremendously in its armed forces, using its economic power to quash criticism worldwide, and is striving to assert itself as the dominant power in the Indo-Pacific region; whereas China, by intensifying its confrontational, aggressive and intimidating actions against some of its neighbours, particularly in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, poses a risk to regional and global security as well as to the EU’s economic interests; whereas China has promoted an alternative narrative for many years, challenging human rights, democratic values and open markets in multilateral and international forums; whereas China’s increasing influence in international organisations has impeded positive progress and further excluded Taiwan from rightful and meaningful participation in these organisations;

P. whereas in 2023, Parliament and the Council concluded agreements on the European defence industry reinforcement through common procurement act (EDIRPA) and the Act in Support of Ammunition Production (ASAP), which, as short-term and emergency measures, aim to encourage the joint procurement of defence products, ramp up the European defence industry’s production capacity, and replenish depleted stocks;

Q. whereas in 2024, the Commission proposed the establishment of a European defence industrial strategy (EDIS) and a European defence industry programme (EDIP), addressing, in particular, the improvement of EU defence capabilities and the governance, security of supply and integration of the Ukrainian defence technological and industrial base (DTIB) into its EU counterpart, the EDTIB;

R. whereas building defence capabilities and adapting them to military needs requires a common strategic culture and shared threat perception and assessment, as well as the development of solutions to be combined in doctrine and concepts;

S. whereas in the light of the above challenges and analyses, the President of the European Commission tasked the Commissioner for Defence and Space and the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy with drafting a white paper on the future of European defence, which is due to be published on 19 March 2025;

1. Believes that the white paper on the future of European defence must put forward concrete measures and options to the members of the European Council so that truly groundbreaking and much needed efforts can be made, in the shortest possible time frames, which must address the following pressing needs: to urgently and substantially increase defence capabilities, overcome fragmentation in the European defence industry market, enhance the capacity of the EDTIB, promptly identify and implement pragmatic solutions for the considerable funding needs, deepen EU-NATO cooperation through a robust European pillar in NATO, and ensure an increase in our military support to Ukraine and other neighbouring countries that share our European values;

2. Calls on Council President António Costa to immediately convene the European Council, based on the conclusions of the white paper, so that EU leaders can agree on immediate and far-reaching decisions to implement the European Defence Union as laid out in Article 42(2) TEU and elaborate on the measures identified in the white paper; urges both the Council and the Commission to identify clear and concrete priorities for the short, medium and long term, with a corresponding timeline of actions;

3. Reiterates its previous calls to take seriously the direct and indirect threat of a Russian attack against the EU and to prepare urgently, without any further delay, to do the utmost to improve European military capacities in order to ensure that Europe is ready for the most extreme military contingencies; calls therefore for the threat analysis of the EU’s Strategic Compass to be updated and upgraded to a threat assessment and for the measures within the compass to be adapted accordingly, in order to reflect the threat magnitude in our threat environment;

4. Strongly believes that Europeans must take on greater responsibility within NATO, especially when it comes to ensuring security on the European continent, and hence underlines that a strong and robust European pillar in NATO is the best way to foster our transatlantic security and ensure the security of all Europeans; recalls that a true transatlantic partnership means shared responsibility, joint efforts and equal burden-sharing;

5. Stresses the importance of learning from Ukraine’s experience in countering Russian aggression and calls for immediate measures to enhance the security and defence of the EU’s north-eastern border with Russia and Belarus by establishing a comprehensive and resilient defence line across land, air and maritime domains to counter military and hybrid threats; emphasises the need to coordinate and integrate national efforts through EU regulatory and financial instruments to accelerate implementation;

6. Stresses that Europe continues to stand firmly on the side of Ukraine as it courageously fights for our European way of life, and recalls its conviction that it is on the Ukrainian battlefields that the future of Europe will be decided; reiterates thus that the EU will support Ukraine for as long as it takes for Ukraine to win this war, as a forced surrender by Ukraine and acceptance of a ‘peace’ treaty on Putin’s terms could accelerate the timeline for Russia to shift its aggression toward the EU or NATO; urges the EU, accordingly, to develop a ‘Ukraine strategy’, outlining clear objectives for the support of Ukraine’s defence capabilities and the integration of the Ukrainian DTIB into the EDTIB, and to find the necessary resources to implement such a strategy, while supporting European defence industry activities in Ukraine in order to ramp up local production and enhance cooperation between Ukrainian and EU defence companies; underscores that such a Ukraine strategy must be an integral part of a ‘European defence’ strategy; calls on the EU Member States to commit at least 0.25 % of their GDP to military aid for Ukraine;

7. Emphasises the need for a holistic approach to European security, ensuring that all EU policies incorporate defence and security dimensions, supported by both regulatory and financial instruments;

8. Believes that the EU should develop economic cooperation contingency plans to prepare for mutual support in the event of large-scale security crises, and should deepen economic and defence industrial dialogues in relation to early warnings of hard, hybrid and cyberthreats, in order to foster mutual support planning, protection of critical infrastructure, maritime and underwater safety, and other forms of deeper defence industrial cooperation; calls, in cooperation with NATO, for an enhanced response to Russia’s hybrid war that aims at destabilising not only Ukraine but the whole European continent;

Addressing capability gaps

9. Underlines the need to urgently address the gaps in military equipment and ammunition by building on the success of the EDIRPA and ASAP programmes and to swiftly finalise EDIP so that, through common procurement, our common European and Ukrainian capabilities are increased and our stocks of crucial defence equipment and ammunition are replenished; welcomes EDIP’s potential to improve the defence capabilities of the EU and its Member States, to strengthen security of supply and to improve the effectiveness and coherence of EU efforts through new governance structures; stresses that EDIP’s financial envelope will fall well short of meeting the ambitions laid out in EDIP and calls, therefore, for additional funding sources to be identified immediately and to include exploring the possibility of reallocations within the current multiannual financial framework (MFF), notably with regard to European defence projects of common interest and to the Ukraine support instrument that currently lacks any funding; stresses, with regard to the threat assessment of a possible Russian attack on EU and NATO territory within the next few years, the urgent need for EDIP to be implemented swiftly and for additional and substantial funding to be provided for joint European defence efforts before the next MFF;

10. Calls for the need for a significant increase in availability of strategic enablers in the air, maritime, underwater, space and cyber domains to be addressed without delay;

11. Suggests that successful Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) and European Defence Fund (EDF) projects be prioritised along the lines of known capability gaps and that sufficient funding be ensured for projects that have proven to deliver; calls for the closure of PESCO projects that do not deliver results and/or do not provide added value in the closing of capability gaps and/or European defence readiness; stresses, in the light of the limited financial envelope of the EDF, that duplicated efforts, especially in crucial capability areas such as the hypersonic interceptor or future main battle tank systems, waste EU tax payers’ money, will prolong development efforts and thus increase the probability of procurement of such capabilities from the US, thus undermining the ambition laid out in EDIS;

12. Calls for the architecture of the EU Defence Industrial Toolbox to be rationalised, as more financial resources alone will not ensure success, since it is even more important that these resources are spent in a more efficient and effective manner;

13. Underlines the need to ensure coherence of output between the EU’s Capability Development Plan (CDP) and Coordinated Annual Review on Defence and the NATO capability targets, without delay, to foster complementarity and to prevent dysfunctional duplications; calls for a concrete action plan to be drawn up, including a clear timeline for each priority in line with both the CDP and the NATO Defence Planning Process;

14. Welcomes the proposal for European defence projects of common interest on the development of common capabilities which go beyond the financial means of an individual Member State, such as a European air shield, autonomous space access and space surveillance, transport and communication capabilities, sovereign digital infrastructures, sovereign cloud infrastructure, long-range precision strike capabilities and integrated air defence, as well as complex maritime and underwater protective assets; stresses that the EU’s efforts in missile defence need to be aligned and integrated with NATO support for the European Sky Shield Initiative, driven by EU Member States; stresses the need to ensure adequate funding, to be established well before 2028, in order to deliver results with regard to the threat analyses of a possible Russian attack against EU and NATO territory within the next few years;

15. Calls for the establishment of EU-specific rapid response strategies for underwater infrastructure protection operating in alignment with NATO while maintaining EU autonomy; encourages investment in advanced detection and surveillance systems for underwater infrastructure monitoring;

16. Calls for the EU to further accelerate the implementation of military mobility; believes that the EU has to move from ‘mobility’ to ‘military logistics’; stresses the need for significant investment in military mobility infrastructure to enhance cargo airlift capabilities, camps, fuel infrastructure through depots, ports, air, sea and rail transport platforms, railway lines, waterways, roads, bridges and logistic hubs; stresses that this must be done in cooperation with NATO by drafting a strategic plan for developing mobility;

17. Underlines the need to quickly agree on additional common European military forces, given that the Rapid Deployment Capacity (RDC) designed as a crisis management instrument provides only a limited European capability to react and support NATO efforts in the event of Russian aggression against EU and NATO territory; recommends, therefore, that the Helsinki Headline Goal of 1999 be revived and that the RDC be gradually extended to ultimately establish a European corps of 60 000 troops, which should be part of a permanent EU structure while being integrated into NATO’s force model;

18. Recommends the establishment of a security of supply regime, including joint strategic stocks of raw materials and critical parts, to ensure the availability of raw materials and components needed for the production of defence products, and to allow production cycles to be ramped up faster and shortened;

Fostering the EU’s defence technological and industrial base (EDTIB)

19. Calls for a significant increase in common procurement by EU Member States of required European defence equipment and capabilities; calls on the Member States to aggregate demand by procuring defence equipment jointly, with the possibility of granting the Commission a mandate to procure on their behalf, ideally ensuring a long-term planning horizon for the EDTIB, thus improving the EDTIB’s production capacities and the interoperability of the European armed forces, and making efficient use of taxpayers’ money through economies of scale;

20. Underlines the outstanding success of the EU’s first joint procurement instrument, EDIRPA, by incentivising joint procurement by Member States; believes that there is a need to continue mechanisms similar to EDIRPA and ASAP while increasing the share of funding for joint procurements compared to support measures for research and development;

21. Believes that the development of the EU’s joint capability should be based on risk analysis provided in threat assessments and on the impact of projects on mitigating the EU’s joint security risks;

22. Believes that it is necessary to conduct systematic analyses of lessons learned from the war in Ukraine from a technology usage perspective, and analyses of the necessity of EU and NATO standards in comparison to how they affect the cost of technology and products compared to their usage effectiveness;

23. Stresses that EDIP must actively facilitate the participation of small and medium-sized enterprises and new market entrants through simplified access to funding, reduced regulatory barriers, and dedicated support mechanisms for scaling up operations; emphasises that EDIP should be designed as a stepping stone towards greater European sovereignty in defence production;

24. Highlights the need to support the development of pan-European value chains in EU defence cooperation by involving companies throughout the EU in the production of defence equipment and by distributing production facilities throughout the EU in order to improve security of supply, increase attractiveness of EU defence cooperation and, above all, enhance the resilience of the supply network, thus reducing our vulnerability in the event of an armed attack;

25. Calls for the review and adaptation of current and future legislation with regard to negative effects on the EDTIB, especially concerning production capacities and security of supply; calls for an extended mapping, in cooperation with the EDTIB, to identify all horizontal hindrances in the current legislation; calls for a detailed action plan to be developed to resolve the issues as soon as possible; underlines the need to review, simplify and harmonise the current framework for export licences and intra-EU transfer licences, as well as for cross-certification of equipment, as one of the priorities to foster better cooperation within the market and among Member States;

26. Strongly underlines the need to significantly increase our investment in emerging and disruptive technologies and structures in defence, taking care not to disperse our resources across too many projects, including cyber defence, outer space, complex underwater protective assets, novel materials and manufacturing, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, cloud computing and sovereign cloud infrastructure, high-performance computing, the internet of things, robotics, biotechnology and nanotechnology;

27. Calls on the Commission to leverage the full dual-use potential of space technologies, considering space as both a new operating domain and a critical enabler of multi-domain operations; underlines that the EU currently has a substantial gap in space capabilities compared to its main competitors and stresses that, in order to address this gap in space technologies, already existing flagship projects (i.e. Copernicus and Galileo) should be enhanced for defence applications; suggests, furthermore, that the EU should urgently pursue the development of its IRIS2 constellation, together with the development of further EU common projects, for example, for space domain awareness and space-based missile early-warning applications;

28. Recalls the increasing threats of cyber warfare and underlines the need for the EU to establish an EU cyber defence coordination centre to monitor, detect and respond to cyberthreats in real time;

29. Highlights the importance of the involvement of other industrial actors that do not undertake defence-related activities as potential partners in scaling up production when necessary;

30. Calls for the EU to foster stronger collaboration between our armed forces, academia, industries and investors;

Ensuring pragmatic sources of finance

31. Calls on the Commission to bring forward a legislative proposal containing a binding commitment for Member States to reach a minimum threshold of 3 % of their GDP on defence expenditure by 2026, with the need to further increase it to 4 % by 2028 and to commit at least 0.5 % of their GDP to EU common defence; stresses that, in the light of three decades of underinvestment, the current threat to the EU requires much higher defence investment, while underlining that the EU budget can only complement but can never replace the efforts of the Member States in that regard; emphasises that national defence investment by Member States will continue to serve as the backbone of defence readiness, while EU funding and its role in harmonising and streamlining the processes may have an important impact in enhancing and multiplying these efforts; calls for the EU and its Member States to work and agree on specific ways and means to achieve a short- to long-term substantial increase in public and private investment in defence and security on the national and European levels;

32. Welcomes the Commission’s announcement on the ReArm Europe Plan;

33. Welcomes the Commission’s proposal to activate the national escape clause of the Stability and Growth Pact;

34. Welcomes the Commission’s proposal for a new instrument providing EUR 150 billion in loans to Member States for joint defence investment;

35. Welcomes the Commission’s announcement of its plans to direct more funds towards defence-related investment, including making it possible for cohesion policy programmes to be used;

36. Calls for a system of European defence bonds to be explored for financing large-scale military investments up front, ensuring urgent capability development; calls for clear allocation criteria prioritising joint capability development, research and innovation, and military mobility infrastructure; calls, along the same lines, for the use of unused ‘coronabonds’ for defence instruments to be explored;

37. Underlines the role of public-private partnerships which are essential to finance defence investment; proposes, therefore, a dedicated EU instrument incentivising private investment in defence following the example of InvestEU;

38. Welcomes the Commission’s announcement of its plans to take action to mobilise private capital through an acceleration of the Savings and Investment Union and through the EIB; calls for an urgent revision of the EIB’s lending policy and immediate flexibility to remove current restrictions on financing ammunition, weapons and equipment or infrastructure dedicated to military use; stresses that this fundamental reform is necessary to unlock significant investment potential for the European defence sector, and to foster risk-sharing instruments to facilitate commercial bank lending to the sector; urges the EIB to take the necessary steps to facilitate private investment in defence, ensuring that the financial landscape supports the growing needs of the industry;

39. Demands a review of past and new legislation and taxonomy to ensure that they are best suited to advance our European defence industry;

40. Believes that environmental, social and governance criteria and taxonomy rules and their interpretation by rating agencies are an obstacle to ensuring increased public finance for defence and hence calls on the Commission to address this issue by, among other things, adapting the regulation on sustainability‐related disclosures in the financial services sector [10] with a view to explicitly ruling out a classification of the defence industry as sustainably or socially harmful;

Supporting innovation

41. Calls for the establishment of an EU agency, inspired by the US’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, as part of the European Defence Agency, which should be solely responsible for supporting research in emerging and disruptive technologies, equipped with an adequate amount of venture capital; emphasises the need for expanded research and development funding to ensure participation by all Member States through the creation of specialised ‘hubs’;

42. Believes in the need to increase the funding for academic research programmes to cooperate with the defence industry to ensure long-term in-depth research in defence;

Finalising the common market for defence

43. Urges Member States to stop invoking Article 346 TFEU as a means of avoiding the application of the Procurement Directive [11], thus undermining the common market for defence; calls on the Commission to close this loophole by immediately launching a review of this directive, as well as of the Intra-Community Transfer Directive [12], which is scheduled for the second half of 2025, and to recast both regulations as soon as possible with a view to strengthening the common market for defence, as well as to introducing flexibility with regard to crisis situations like those we are currently facing;

44. Calls for the transformation of NATO standards into EU legislation in order to facilitate the interoperability of European armed forces while strengthening our capacity to negotiate these standards within NATO and to enforce the consistent implementation of these standard in practice;

45. Presses for a common European certification scheme for weapons systems and a move beyond the current system of national certification in order to speed up the introduction of weapons systems into the armed forces of Member States;

Fostering effective governance

46. Deplores the lack of cohesion and effectiveness of EU defence structures and instruments resulting from the loose institutional connection between the Council and the Commission, which not only significantly limits the added value and the effectiveness of cooperation in the EU framework but also results in the ineffective use of taxpayers’ money;

47. Calls for the creation of a permanent Council of EU defence ministers;

48. Suggests that the Commissioner for Defence and Space should become the head of the European Defence Agency and should also be nominated as the coordinator for PESCO projects by recasting the respective Council decisions;

49. Encourages the creation of a ‘defence readiness board’ as proposed in EDIP, led by the Defence Commissioner, which should meet frequently in different configurations, for example, EU defence ministers, national procurement directors and industry representatives;

50. Believes that the Defence Commissioner should exercise supervision over the EU Military Committee, the EU Military Staff and military operations;

51. Suggests that the funding for PESCO and the European Defence Agency be transferred into the common EU budget;

52. Highlights the need for enhanced and effective parliamentary scrutiny in the area of defence, given its importance and the effects on other areas of increasing investment in defence; calls, therefore, for the establishment of an interinstitutional agreement ensuring Parliament’s access to classified information and the provision of physical infrastructure to that end, allowing for committee meetings to be conducted under the classification of EU restricted, or an even higher security classification;

Fostering EU-NATO complementarity

53. Calls for a true strategic partnership between the EU and NATO, in full respect of the agreed guiding principles of cooperation, as well as the decision-making autonomy of both organisations, and underlines that only together can we ensure our security and long-term prosperity;

54. Underlines the need for an agreement on the exchange of classified information between the EU and NATO;

55. Calls for the establishment of a regular joint armament conference between the EU and NATO in order to coordinate and align efforts with regard to capability development;

56. Recalls the need to ensure frequent EU-NATO meetings and summits on political and experts levels, in an inclusive, non-discriminatory and reciprocal manner;

57. Calls for the EU to reinforce the Structured Dialogue with NATO on the defence industry in order to enhance cooperation in key areas such as interoperability and standardisation;

Fostering cooperation with non-EU partners

58. Recalls that there is no alternative to strong and sustainable transatlantic cooperation and thus believes that every effort must be made to foster transatlantic cooperation in every field of the military and defence sectors, while recalling the need to foster European defence and develop our sovereignty;

59. Underlines the need to enhance our partnership with like-minded countries, particularly those in Europe, such as the UK and Norway; calls for an EU-UK broad security pact, also covering key subjects such as energy, migration and critical minerals; points to the added value of fostering our relationships with global partners such as the US, Japan and Australia;

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60. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and the parliaments and governments of the EU Member States and NATO member countries.

MIL OSI Europe News –

March 7, 2025
MIL-OSI Europe: MOTION FOR A RESOLUTION on the white paper on the future of European defence – B10-0150/2025

Source: European Parliament

B10‑0150/2025

European Parliament resolution on the white paper on the future of European defence

(2025/2565(RSP))

The European Parliament,

– having regard to Rule 136(2) of its Rules of Procedure,

A. whereas the EU is currently under attack, with hybrid incidents inside its borders, a large-scale war in its neighbourhood, and a realignment of global powers, all presenting real risks to the security of the EU and its citizens and requiring immediate, ambitious and decisive action;

B. whereas the Commissioner for Defence and Space and the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy are expected to present a white paper on the future of European defence on 19 March 2025, which should serve as a roadmap for such action;

1. Urges the EU to act immediately to ensure its ability to protect its citizens, deter its enemies, support its allies and become a powerful defender of the rules-based international order and the principles of the European security architecture; urges the EU and its Member States to define a coherent, comprehensive and actionable strategy to achieve this; expects the Commission to present a proposal for such a strategy in its white paper on the future of European defence;

2. Is firmly convinced that a united EU can overcome all the challenges it faces and become a global power for peace, security, human rights and sustainable development, but that this requires a strong EU budget or additional European financial instruments, a reliable and sovereign industrial basis, a full spectrum of European military capabilities, including strategic enablers, and an integrated command allowing all national forces to act under a unified structure at the service of the EU, alone or in complementarity with other allied forces;

3. Believes that the strategy must include a renewed threat assessment, reflecting the recent unprecedented changes in the EU’s geopolitical context, a plan for supporting Ukraine against Russia’s war of aggression, as a key action to defend the EU’s values and protect its citizens and territory, a roadmap to close the capability gap, restore deterrence and enable autonomous EU action, and a plan to finance such vital transformations in the EU’s capacity to act;

4. Stresses its firm commitment to continued close cooperation with NATO to reinforce deterrence, collective defence and interoperability; calls nonetheless for the development of a fully-capable European Pillar of NATO able to act autonomously whenever necessary;

Assessing our threats and challenges

5. Is convinced that the EU needs to define its foreign policy goals and strategic defence doctrine, identifying the most pressing challenges, systemic threats and rival actors, and to shape its defence strategy accordingly;

6. Strongly believes that Europe is today facing the most profound military threat to its territorial integrity since the Second World War; believes that Russia and its allies are currently the most significant threat to our security and that of EU candidate countries and partners, and reiterates its condemnation in the strongest terms of Russia’s unprovoked, illegal and unjustified war of aggression against Ukraine; notes, however, that the instability in our southern neighbourhood, the rise in Chinese military power, the increased aggressiveness of some middle powers and the behaviour of the Trump administration, which appears ready to jeopardise transatlantic cooperation on common security and make a deal with the Russian aggressor at the expense of Ukrainian and European security, which are one and the same, must also be fully taken into consideration;

7. Highlights the fact that on assessments by several European intelligence services, Russia will be ready to attack EU territory within 3 to 10 years, particularly if there is a ceasefire in its aggression against Ukraine that does not lead to a just and lasting peace; notes with deep concern that the Russian armed forces have grown in size and gained valuable battlefield experience, unlike any European forces with the exception of those of Ukraine, aims to have a 1.5 million-strong military by 2026 and has significantly ramped up its armaments production, making it an extremely worrisome threat for the EU’s security and for peace in Europe and globally;

8. Strongly condemns Russia’s escalating hybrid warfare tactics within the EU and its neighbourhood, which encompass both non-physical and physical actions, including attacks on critical infrastructure and disruption of elections; highlights that Russia’s strategic doctrine includes significant conventional conflict in its conception and execution of hybrid war and conceives hybrid wars as the main line of future military development, rather than a temporary phenomenon; calls for the EU to immediately and significantly step up its ability to defend, attribute and punish hybrid warfare waged within its territory and that of candidate countries;

9. Condemns all countries that are providing military equipment, financial support or any other form of assistance to Russia, thereby enabling and intensifying its ongoing aggression; warns of the very serious risks resulting from a widening of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine; is deeply concerned that the involvement of Iran and North Korea will provide them with important lessons to modernise their military capabilities, and may accelerate their paths towards nuclearisation;

10. Reaffirms its grave concerns about China’s increasing military investments and capabilities; expresses serious concerns about the renewed Chinese and Russian commitment to further strengthen their military ties and condemns China’s supplying of components and equipment to Moscow’s military industry;

11. Notes with concern the increase in both intra and inter-state conflicts in the EU’s wider neighbourhood, in part driven by the hegemonic ambitions of several middle powers, the presence of aggressive non-state actors and by the fragility of several states; also notes that this leads to clear threats to the EU’s security, namely by fostering terrorism and increasing the destabilisation of populations, often forcing their displacement;

12. Is deeply concerned by the recent actions of the Trump administration, which distance it from the values that have been at the core of its relationship with the EU, namely democracy, the rule of law, freedom of speech and support for the rules-based international order; regrets, in this regard, the votes of the US Government, aligned with the Russian Government, in the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council on resolutions about the third anniversary of Russia’s war of aggression, as well as the unilateral decision to end Russia’s international isolation and to propose a normalisation of relations between them; strongly condemns any attempt to blame Ukraine, the victim, for the actions of the aggressor, Russia; urges the US Government to maintain maximum pressure on Russia until the latter agrees to a just and lasting peace for Ukraine; rejects any attempt by the US Government to impose a new security architecture on the EU and its Member States, and reiterates that any negotiation of such a security architecture must take place with the EU at the table; is deeply concerned by the actions of the US Government towards NATO and the doubts raised regarding the United States’ commitment to the security of the European continent; supports the peace process for Ukraine launched by European leaders, together with Ukraine, on 2 March 2025 in London, which seeks a just and lasting peace for Ukraine, and must be based on full respect for Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, the principles of international law, accountability for Russia’s war crimes and crime of aggression, Russian payments for the massive damage caused in Ukraine and credible security guarantees for Ukraine;

13. Concurs with the assessment of the Strategic Compass that the EU is surrounded by instability and conflicts, but notes that in the meantime the situation has changed dramatically; believes that, altogether, these developments produce an encirclement of Europe that reduces its scope for the pursuit of democratically defined and autonomous interests and values, and that this requires an immediate response; recognises the evolving nature of global security threats and therefore calls for the EU to conduct more frequent threat assessments, as they are the precondition for a realistic and successful planning of capabilities and operations;

Supporting Ukraine

14. Urges the EU and its Member States, together with international partners and NATO allies, to immediately increase their military support to Ukraine in order to assist it in exercising its legitimate right to self-defence against the Russian war of aggression according to Article 51 of the UN Charter; calls, in this regard, for the swift adoption of the next military aid package, which should be the largest to date and reflect the level of ambition this juncture calls for; calls on the Member States, international partners and NATO allies to lift all restrictions on the use of Western weapons systems delivered to Ukraine against military targets in Russian territory; calls for a significant increase in the financing of military support to Ukraine; calls on the Member States, together with their G7 partners, to immediately seize all frozen Russian assets in order to maintain and step up the EU’s response to Ukraine’s military needs;

15. Urges the Member States to immediately engage in joint procurement of additional capabilities, in particular ammunition for air defence and artillery, as well as any capabilities in which US assistance has played a key role thus far; further urges them to plan in advance for a possible sudden stop in US military assistance;

16. Welcomes the continued support for the Ukrainian Armed Forces through the EU Military Assistance Mission in support of Ukraine, which has already trained more than 60 000 Ukrainian troops, and calls on the mission to continue training as many troops as possible; stresses the importance of specific training modules aimed at developing the capacities of existing and future officers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces across all levels and in accordance with their needs; emphasises that the mission should also act as a platform for the exchange of best practices that would ensure that European forces also benefit from the lessons learnt on the battlefield by the Ukrainian Armed Forces; calls on the Member States to further expand training operations for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, including training operations in Ukrainian territory;

17. Insists on the paramount importance of cooperation with, and the integration of, the Ukrainian defence industry into the EU’s defence technological and industrial base (EDTIB), which offers clear advantages for both sides, and calls for speedier integration of the Ukrainian defence industry; recalls the importance of the European Defence Industry Programme (EDIP) to that effect, and highlights the urgency of properly financing EDIP’s Ukraine Support Instrument, which is currently not budgeted; calls on the Commission to include Ukraine and its defence industry in all its defence industrial programmes;

18. Praises the ‘Danish Model’ for support to Ukraine, which consists of procuring defence capabilities produced directly in Ukraine; urges the EU and its Member States to strongly support this model and to make full use of its potential, as there is an underutilisation of Ukraine’s defence industrial capacity, estimated at around 50 %, and it brings many advantages to both sides, such as cheaper equipment, speedier and safer logistics as well as greater ease of training and maintenance;

19. Calls for the EU and its Member States to actively work towards maintaining and achieving the broadest possible international support for Ukraine and identifying a peaceful solution to the war that must be based on full respect for Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, the principles of international law, accountability for Russia’s war crimes and the crime of aggression, and Russian payments for the massive damage caused in Ukraine; urges the EU and its Member States to participate in establishing robust future security guarantees for Ukraine;

Closing the capabilities gap and restoring deterrence

20. Strongly believes that strengthening Europe’s security and defence requires not just a simple increase in ambition and action, but a complete overhaul of the way we act and invest in our security and defence, such that from now on we plan, innovate, develop, purchase, maintain and deploy capabilities together, in a coordinated and integrated fashion, while making full use of the complementary competences of all actors in Europe, including NATO;

21. Calls on the Commission to come up with a complete programme for defence, including against hybrid attacks, ensuring that planning, research, development, procurement and management of capabilities are all done through a European lens, and that all EU funds are used as a stimulus to joint EU action, instead of perpetuating the present state of market fragmentation, divergent and incompatible capabilities, and superfluous and wasteful investments; considers EDIP to be a good step forward and as such calls for its swift adoption;

22. Recognises that the starting point must be a realistic assessment of the current capabilities and capability gap; calls on the Commission, with the support of the European Defence Agency and in cooperation with NATO, to identify critical defence capability gaps and shortfalls in the EU, in particular for strategic enablers, where the Member States have fallen behind and become dependent on non-European allies; furthermore, calls on the Commission to transform the capability gaps into clear industrial targets that can be the object of planning and programming and benefit from an industrial policy;

23. Declares the EDTIB to be a strategic asset of the EU, and as such considers that the Commission should be tasked with its mapping and monitoring, so as to safeguard the EU’s strengths, reduce its vulnerabilities, avoid crises, and provide it with an effective and efficient industrial policy; calls on the Commission to draw on the EU Military Committee’s expertise in the definition of defence industries’ priorities and the formulation of defence initiatives in order to ensure alignment between industrial capabilities and military needs; recalls the importance of ensuring that the EDTIB is present in all Member States, distributing the burden and the benefits equitably, and preventing its disruption by a targeted attack on a particular area;

24. Strongly believes that EU support for the production and procurement of defence products should focus on stimulating the EDTIB, increasing production volumes and ensuring the development of native European solutions for key capabilities, in particular for domains of action where we have so far relied on support from allies, and thus be oriented towards EU-based companies; rejects a scenario in which EU funds contribute to perpetuating or deepening dependences on non-European actors, whether for production of capabilities or their deployment; notes with concern that the vast majority of EU defence investment is diverted to defence industry players outside the EU; highlights that our investments should also contribute to bringing our European allies closer together, first and foremost Ukraine, but also Norway and the UK, finding synergies between complementary industrial strengths and bolstering the interoperability of our fighting forces; states, however, that joining common projects in defence and security requires a steadfast commitment to the EU’s values and norms and demands that any industrial partnerships with non-EU allies include strong safeguards on technology transfer and design authority, ensuring that we do not face restrictions on the use of the capabilities acquired; highlights that EU funds will provide opportunities for the defence industry, but also require a commitment to give priority to orders linked to ensuring European security and defence, in particular in times of crisis;

25. Urges the Member States to radically change the way they procure defence products, choosing common procurement by default, and to consider tasking the Commission with undertaking joint procurement on their behalf; considers that all products procured in the EU, particularly those supported by EU funds, must respect strong safeguards on technology transfer and design authority;

26. Welcomes all measures that allow a faster and more effective ramp-up of production of defence products in Europe, in particular those that are most needed for a land war; calls for a change in paradigm from a ‘flow’ approach to a ‘stock’ approach, with stock piles of materiel ready for a sustained increase in demand; notes, in this regard, the advantages offered by mechanisms such as advance purchase agreements, the establishment of ‘ever-warm’ facilities and the creation of defence readiness pools; calls on the Commission to support the Member States in developing wartime economic cooperation contingency plans with close partners to prepare for mutual support in the case of large-scale security crises involving them directly, and to deepen wartime economic dialogues with European and global partners;

27. Highlights that the EDTIB cannot thrive without a true single market for defence; emphasises, in this regard, the need for an effective regulatory framework aimed at encouraging innovation and cross-border cooperation in production, procurement and investment; insists on the need to remove barriers to market entry for defence products across the EU and calls on the Commission to act upon the results of the reviews of the Directives on the transfer of defence-related products [1] and defence procurement [2], considering the obstacles and costs imposed by the current fragmented framework for certification of defence products; calls on the Commission to propose a regulation for common rules on the certification of defence products and the creation of a European defence certification authority; underlines at the same time the importance of maintaining fruitful competition between different undertakings in the single market for defence; calls on the Commission to propose a regulation on the standardisation of defence products with binding industrial standards, taking advantage of the lessons learnt from the implementation of NATO defence standards;

28. Stresses the need for greater transparency and convergence at the national and European levels on arms exports; points out the need for the Member States to respect the EU Common Position on Arms Exports, while acknowledging their competences in their defence acquisition policies;

29. Underlines the importance of Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) in improving and harmonising the EU’s defence capabilities; reiterates its regret that Member States continue to not make full use of the PESCO framework; reiterates its call on the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and the Member States, and with the involvement of the Commission, to assess projects and their potential regularly and comprehensively with a view to streamlining the current set of projects to a small set of priority projects; believes that priority projects must focus on reducing our dependencies regarding strategic enablers, such as battlefield command and control (C2), aerial and satellite intelligence, surveillance and recognition, satellite communication, air defence and suppression of enemy air defences, military mobility, strategic and tactical air transport and aerial refuelling, missile and deep strike capabilities, drone and anti-drone technologies, combat engineering and wet-gap crossing, and airborne electronic attack; believes that these could be European Defence Projects of Common Interest (EDPCI); regrets that Parliament is not in a position to properly scrutinise PESCO projects and calls for a change of paradigm for the governance of EDPCIs, such that Parliament is adequately involved; reiterates its call on the Member States to provide an implementation report on PESCO projects to Parliament at least twice a year;

30. Calls on the Commission to propose an EU drones package, focusing on drone and anti-drone systems and auxiliary capabilities, containing plans and funds to stimulate research and development, which should learn from the Ukrainian experience and be open to the participation of Ukraine’s highly innovative companies, as well as an industrial programme dedicated to the joint development, production and procurement of drones and anti-drone systems, and a regulation on the use of drones in civilian and military contexts;

31. Calls on the Commission to step up the ambition of the European Defence Fund, both quantitatively and qualitatively, and to better align its work programme with the capability planning exercises; recalls that the EU’s investment in defence research and innovation is much lower than that of its industrial competitors; considers that part of the investment from the European Defence Fund (EDF) should be designed to foster partnerships between academia, ministries of defence and the defence industry, and to the creation of dedicated research centres for defence; highlights the importance of promoting the participation of the most innovative high-tech companies from the civilian sector in the EDF;

32. Recalls that the EDTIB is currently facing a shortage of skilled workers, and calls on the Commission and the Member States to develop a strategy to train, upskill and reskill workers; considers that funding from defence programmes must be paired with requirements regarding benefits for workers and communities where the investments are located, making the European defence industry a source of high-quality jobs and earning the EDTIB broad support from the population;

33. Calls for the EU and its Member States to quickly improve the state of military mobility and logistics, removing all unnecessary obstacles that slow down the speed at which the EU can react to threats and deploy its forces;

34. Calls for the EU to develop a comprehensive set of instruments to detect, prevent and react to hybrid attacks and threats and protect the Union’s citizens and assets, including critical infrastructure, but also democratic institutions and processes; reiterates its call on the Member States, the European External Action Service and the Commission to consider the creation of a well-resourced and independent structure tasked with identifying, analysing and documenting foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) threats against the EU as a whole to increase situational awareness and threat intelligence sharing, and develop attribution capabilities and countermeasures in relation to FIMI;

35. Stresses the importance of enhanced intelligence sharing and information exchange among the Member States and EU institutions, including Parliament, to improve situational awareness and to be able to better anticipate and counter threats to collective security and define common lines of action under the common security and defence policy (CSDP), particularly in the area of crisis management; calls on the Member States to use the EU Intelligence Analysis Centre (EU INTCEN) as an effective intelligence-sharing body to share intelligence securely, formulate a common strategic culture and provide strategic information to better anticipate and respond to crises within and outside the EU; reiterates its call for the deployment of intelligence-gathering capacities in all CSDP missions and operations, which would provide information to the EU INTCEN, EU military staff, the EU’s Military Planning and Conduct Capability (MPCC) and the Civilian Planning and Conduct Capability;

36. Welcomes the Niinistö report and its recommendations for strengthening Europe’s civilian and military preparedness and resilience; supports the adoption of a whole-of-society approach to resilience, involving the active engagement of the EU institutions, the Member States, civil society and individual citizens in strengthening the Union’s security framework; urges the EU to increase the alignment of existing EU instruments and policies, as well as that between EU and national policies, pioneering a ‘preparedness in all policies’ approach to security and defence, ensuring they do not generate contradictory obligations or jeopardise overall defence objectives, especially during a security crisis; expects the upcoming EU strategy on preparedness to offer details of the implementation of the report;

Enabling autonomous EU action

37. Recalls that the Strategic Compass provides the EU and its Member States with a framework for strengthening the EU’s security and defence and for advancing towards a common forward-looking strategic culture; reiterates that the Strategic Compass’s ambitious aims and milestones can only be achieved with the corresponding political will, adequate financial contributions and openness to cooperation where necessary; calls for the Member States to take all the necessary steps and decisions and fully implement the Strategic Compass; reiterates its call to strengthen the EU-s MPCC, establishing it as the preferred command and control structure for EU military operations and providing it with adequate premises, staff, enhanced command and control, and effective communication and information systems for all CSDP missions and operations, including those of the Rapid Deployment Capacity; insists that the Rapid Deployment Capacity must achieve full operational capability in the first half of 2025 at the latest, with at least 5 000 troops; calls on the Member States to urgently pursue a more ambitious pace and scale of command integration and joint operational capability, with the goal of enabling the EU to conduct large-scale operations independently, without reliance on non-EU countries for any capability, including strategic enablers; stresses that the EU and its Member States cannot develop consistent foreign and defence policies without strong support for democratic and agile structures and decision-making processes; underlines that further institutional discussions on removing the unanimity requirement to enhance cooperation should be explored;

38. Underlines that in the current geopolitical context, the need for continuing to operationalise Article 42(7) of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) on mutual assistance, ensuring solidarity among Member States, especially those whose geographical position leaves them directly exposed to imminent threats and challenges, regardless of whether or not they are NATO members, is of utmost importance; calls on the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy to present concrete steps towards developing a true EU solidarity policy, including by clarifying the practical arrangements in the event of a Member State triggering Article 42(7) TEU;

39. Notes that EU candidate countries are frequently the target of destabilisation campaigns, and thus calls for the EU to ensure them greater support, in order to preserve stability and security and increase defence cooperation, especially in the fight against disinformation and hybrid warfare; is concerned that otherwise it will act as an invitation to Russia to invade them before they finally join the EU;

40. Reiterates the importance of EU-NATO cooperation, as NATO remains, for those states that are members of it, an important pillar of their collective defence, such that EU-NATO cooperation should continue, in particular in areas such as information exchange, planning, military mobility and exchange of best practices; highlights that all EU-NATO cooperation must be mutually beneficial and inclusive and respect the EU’s capacity to act autonomously; remains concerned, in this respect, that Türkiye, a NATO member and EU candidate country, excludes Cyprus from cooperation with NATO, hampering an enhanced relationship between the EU and NATO;

41. Underlines the need for a strong EU defence pillar within NATO, able to act autonomously from, and in complementarity with, NATO, turning the transatlantic alliance into a more equal partnership, and granting the necessary security guarantees to the EU, its Member States and whoever else they deem it necessary to extend them to;

42. Considers it essential to formalise a security and defence partnership with the United Kingdom as a means of strengthening European security and the European pillar of NATO, in particular in the context of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine; underlines, in this regard, the importance of closer cooperation on information and intelligence sharing, military mobility, security and defence initiatives, crisis management, cyber defence, hybrid threats, FIMI and in jointly addressing shared threats;

43. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to ensure that all instruments of external action, including development aid and cooperation, are aligned with the EU’s security objectives, fostering resilient societies by promoting inclusive economic growth, good governance and human rights; emphasises the crucial role that diplomacy and development cooperation play alongside military efforts in ensuring long-term international security; underscores that sustainable peace cannot be achieved through military measures alone, but requires comprehensive strategies that address the root causes of instability, such as poverty, inequality, governance failures and climate change;

Financing our security and defence

44. Considers that, in order to be able to protect its citizens, deter its enemies, support its allies and become a powerful actor in the defence of a rules-based international order, the EU requires an immediate, substantial and sustained investment in security and defence, in particular at EU level, using a mix of public and private funds and incentivising better spending and better collective action; calls for the EU and the Member States to urgently agree on concrete financial solutions to finance security and defence-related investments; welcomes the ReArmEU initiative by the Commission as an important first step towards swift action;

45. Recalls that the Commission has estimated the funding needed at EUR 500 billion over the next 10 years (2025-2034), including EUR 400 billion to strengthen Member States’ defence capabilities and EUR 100 billion to support Ukraine; notes higher estimates, such as a Bruegel study referring to EUR 250 billion annually in the event that the United States withdraws its military presence from Europe; highlights that the cost of isolated action is much higher than the cost of joint action, and that the EU and its Member states can also increase their preparedness by making current investment more efficient and coordinated; highlights that the cost of non-preparedness and the consequent loss of autonomy and potential military defeat is much higher than the cost of acting decisively now;

46. Strongly supports increased investments in our security and defence to ensure that the EU and its Member States are able to face all types of threats, from hybrid to conventional, and establish strong deterrence, while reducing dependences; notes that insecurity, social exclusion and poverty are persistently weaponised by our enemies, as they make large swaths of people more vulnerable to hostile propaganda and anti-democratic narratives; demands therefore that the increased investments in our security and defence come on top of the important investments in social cohesion and welfare, and not instead of them; calls instead for a comprehensive EU investment strategy, based on a permanent fiscal capacity that addresses both vulnerabilities in military capabilities and in the social fabric, empowering us to fight all threats to our values, social model, security and defence; underlines that this pressing investment requires raising public financial resources quickly and in substantial volumes and that this should be based on the principle of social solidarity and a fair redistribution of wealth within our European societies; calls therefore on the Commission to propose new own resources and taxes on the stakeholders benefiting from the current economic and security situation, notably through windfall profits, in order to ensure a fair and sustainable contribution to our collective resilience; recalls that investing in security and defence brings many additional benefits for European society besides greater security and autonomy, and contributes to the desire to make the EU’s economy more competitive;

47. Warns that simply increasing national defence spending without addressing coordination issues, redundant efforts, and misaligned strategies could be counterproductive as it may exacerbate force integration challenges and drive up procurement costs for all Member States by intensifying competition between them; is therefore concerned by the Commission’s proposals in ReArmEU to activate the escape clause of the Stability and Growth Pact for defence investments, which would change the fiscal rules without creating more fiscal space and without accompanying it with proposals for increased coordinated or joint spending; recalls that any exemption should take into account the need to avoid moral hazard and avoid rewarding countries with long-standing inadequacies in their security and defence spending; demands that the Commission and the Member States design any exemptions for defence spending ramp-up in a way that incentivises coordinated spending and ensures the definition of such investments takes into account all threats, including hybrid, and the need to improve military mobility, resilience and security of communications and the availability of skilled workers;

48. Calls therefore for the bulk of the effort to serve EU-level action; regrets that the Commission’s ReArmEU initiative is mostly based on national expenditure; furthermore calls for the EU and its Member States to give prominent coordination roles to the Commission and the European Defence Agency in new financing instruments, which should be coupled with a complete programme for defence, including against hybrid attacks, ensuring that planning, development, procurement and management of capabilities is done together, in groupings of significant numbers of Member States, and often with the Commission and the European Defence Agency acting on their behalf;

49. Recognises that the present multiannual financial framework (MFF) is unable to provide sufficient resources for security and defence, and rejects any increases in security and defence spending in the present and future MFFs at the expense of cohesion policy funds, as proposed by the Commission in its ReArmEU initiative; calls on the Commission and the Member States to adapt the cohesion policy funds to a new geopolitical reality, shifting from a reactive, crisis-response stance to a more proactive policy focused on resilience; underlines that the EU budget alone cannot fill the defence spending gap, but has an important role to play; calls for additional EU-wide and European solutions to bridge the gap until the next MFF; highlights the importance of future MFFs in transforming the current immediate increases in security and defence into structural and sustainable EU-level efforts to ensure the EU’s security and defence;

50. Notes the proposals to make use of readily available sources of capital to finance security and defence, namely the unspent funds of NextGenerationEU and potential financial lines from the European Stability Mechanism, similar to the programme put together during the response to the COVID-19 pandemic; believes that these options could be explored, but would fall short of the needs estimated by the Commission;

51. Calls therefore on the Commission to raise common debt to provide the Union with the fiscal capacity to borrow in exceptional and crises situations, present and future, taking into account the experience and lessons learnt from NextGenerationEU, as we are now experiencing a pressing need to boost security and defence to protect the EU’s citizens, restore deterrence and support our allies, first and foremost Ukraine; notes additional ideas to create a rearmament bank or a special purpose vehicle with pooled national guarantees to ensure Member States have easier access to markets; underlines that the meaningful involvement of Parliament as one arm of the budgetary authority in the governance of future EU defence spending is a sine qua non; reiterates that the governance of whatever instrument is used should be such that it gives rise to a European defence programme that uses the funds to solve coordination problems in planning, developing, procuring, maintaining and deploying capabilities, reduces dependencies from non-European countries, supports the EDTIB and ultimately enables the EU and its close allies to act autonomously and in a coordinated manner;

52. Recognises the importance of mobilising private capital into security and defence; recalls, however, that, as governments remain the sole procurers of military capabilities, private capital will not replace public capital in the security and defence sector; calls on the Commission and the European Investment Bank (EIB) to consider an investment guarantee programme, similar to InvestEU, to assist in this effort; calls on the EIB to re-evaluate the list of excluded activities, to adjust its lending policy to increase the volume of available funding in the field of security and defence, and to investigate earmarked debt issuance for funding security and defence projects; calls for more consistent support for companies by reducing unnecessary administrative burdens and simplifying procedures, in particular by increasing information-sharing between public authorities, upholding the once-only principle and making full use of digital technologies; calls for the EU to start preparing emergency procedures for projects established in response to major crises or wars;

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53. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the European Council, the Council, the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, the President of the Commission and competent Commissioners, the EU security and defence agencies, and the governments and parliaments of the Member States.

MIL OSI Europe News –

March 7, 2025
MIL-OSI Europe: Answer to a written question – Markus Pieper’s appointment to newly created position of EU SME Envoy – P-000671/2024(ASW)
Source: European Parliament
1. The individual assessments of candidates in a selection procedure are confidential and covered both by the secrecy of panel deliberations, as recognised by the case-law of the EU courts[1], and by data protection rules. For any selection procedure that involves several stages, the results obtained by a candidate who is successful in one stage of the process do not prejudge the outcome of the subsequent stages. The preselection panel and the consultative committee on appointments (CCA) identified the candidates with the necessary qualifications and competences to proceed to the subsequent stage. There was no ranking between the candidates shortlisted by the CCA when they were proposed for interviews by the competent Commissioners. The shortlist was based on the previous stages that identified the best qualified candidates following the results of the preselection panel and the external assessment reports summarising the strengths and areas for development of the candidates. For the specific selection procedure, both the President and the Commissioner in charge of internal market are considered as ‘portfolio Commissioners’, since, according to the ‘Small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) Relief Package Communication’, the EU SME Envoy ‘shall report directly to the President, while also reporting to the Commissioner for Internal Market on all SME-related activities conducted in conjunction with the services of the Directorate General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs’[2].

2. As set out in the policy on senior officials, ‘merit is the dominant criterion in decisions on senior official appointments[3]’. Geographical or gender balance are general policy considerations. Appointments of senior officials fall within the institutional autonomy of each institution and each institution has a margin of discretion when deciding among different qualified candidates. The Commission took the appointment decision based on the vast experience and track record of Mr Pieper in the field of SMEs.

3. The Commission does not comment on assertions made by third parties and maintains that the selection procedure was run in accordance with the established rules and principles, which are publicly available and easily accessible.

For the sake of completeness, it should be noted that Mr Pieper decided not to take up his post as EU SME Envoy on 16 April 2024 as planned.

[1] See the judgment of the Court of Justice of the EU of 4 July 1996, Parliament v Innamorati, EU:C:1996:276, paras. 24-30 and, more recently, in the context of a selection procedure for a post in the Regulatory Scrutiny Board, the judgment of the General Court of 21 December 2022, OM v Commission, T-118/22, EU:T:2022:849, para. 24 and the case-law cited.

[2] See Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions, SME Relief Package, Strasbourg, 12.9.2023 COM(2023) 535 final, p. 5.

[3] https://commission.europa.eu/jobs-european-commission/job-opportunities/managers-european-commission_en
Last updated: 6 March 2025
MIL OSI Europe News –
March 7, 2025
MIL-OSI Europe: Written question – Greece’s potential contribution to the EU green hydrogen strategy – E-000870/2025
Source: European Parliament
Question for written answer E-000870/2025
to the Commission
Rule 144
Sakis Arnaoutoglou (S&D)

Green hydrogen is a key pillar of Europe’s strategy for achieving climate neutrality by 2050. The target is for the EU to produce 10 million tonnes a year by 2030.

With its strong potential in the renewable energy sector Greece is well placed to play a central role in Europe’s green hydrogen market. However, there have been delays in the development of a comprehensive national hydrogen strategy. Although a committee tasked with drawing up a national strategy was set up in 2019, the regulatory framework is still lacking and this is holding up critical investments. By actively participating in the green transition with hydrogen, Greece can become more self-sufficient in terms of energy, create new jobs and play a part in achieving climate targets.

Although ambitious projects, such as the production of hydrogen for export to Germany, have been announced, the absence of a clear legislative framework and funding mechanisms is preventing them from materialising.

In view of these delays, can the Commission answer the following:

1.In its opinion, what progress has Greece made in developing green hydrogen compared to other European countries?

2.What specific measures is it planning in order to expedite the adoption of green hydrogen in Greece, particularly given the delays in the regulatory framework?

3.Are there any European funding instruments available that could help Greece develop the necessary infrastructure and strengthen the hydrogen supply chain, turning the country into an energy hub between Europe and the Middle East?

Submitted: 27.2.2025
Last updated: 6 March 2025
MIL OSI Europe News –
March 7, 2025
MIL-OSI Europe: Answer to a written question – Measures to limit the effects of the recent ecological disaster in the Black Sea – E-000084/2025(ASW)
Source: European Parliament
The Commission acknowledges the increased difficulties for Romania and Bulgaria to protect their marine environment, exacerbated by Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and the absence of well-functioning regional cooperation.

Under the Marine Strategy Framework Directive[1] (MSFD), Romania and Bulgaria have been assisted in developing their marine strategies to protect their marine waters.

The EU Research and Innovation Framework Programme Horizon Europe[2] supports environmental protection in the Black Sea[3]. The Interreg Black Sea programme[4] provides EUR 95 million of EU funds[5].

The Cohesion Policy[6] provides support for a total estimated value of EUR 70 million, focused on the Natura 2000 sites in the Black Sea and Danube Delta.

A project[7] promoted monitoring and assessment activities, in line with MSFD requirements. Under the Common Maritime Agenda[8] for the Black Sea, projects against marine pollution due to the ongoing conflict started[9].

The Commission alerts the authorities in Bulgaria and Romania daily on possible pollution incidents, including from oil spills, detected by satellite surveillance[10]. National authorities can request assistance from the Union Civil Protection Mechanism[11].

Furthermore, the Ukraine Investment Framework[12] could support investments related to climate change, environmental and biodiversity protection.

The Commission also works towards the EU goal[13] of acceding the Bucharest Convention, improving environmental protection of the Black Sea and strengthening the EU technical and financial contribution.

[1] Directive 2008/56/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 June 2008 establishing a framework for community action in the field of marine environmental policy, OJ L 164, 25.6.2008, p. 19-40.

[2] https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/funding/funding-opportunities/funding-programmes-and-open-calls/horizon-europe_en

[3] Notably through the EU Mission Restore our Ocean and Waters: https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/funding/funding-opportunities/funding-programmes-and-open-calls/horizon-europe/eu-missions-horizon-europe/restore-our-ocean-and-waters_en and more particularly its Danube and Black Sea Lighthouse: https://restore4life.eu/eu-missions-restore-our-ocean-waters/ or through specific projects such as https://www.doorsblacksea.eu, https://bridgeblacksea.org/

[4] Involving eight countries https://blacksea-cbc.net/

[5] Much of it for risk prevention and biodiversity.

[6] https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/policy/what/investment-policy_en

[7] https://emblasproject.org/

[8] The EU sea basin strategy promoting maritime regional cooperation among the coastal countries in the Black Sea region, except for Russia.

[9] Building Response Frameworks under existing and new Marine Pollution Challenges in the Black Sea (RESPONSE): https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/how-to-participate/org-details/999999999/project/101124661/program/43392145/details and Harnessing complementary curricular preparedness via sustainable management in response to civil and military pollution on the coastline, tributaries and lagoons in Black Sea’s North, West, South zone (Black Sea SIERRA): https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/how-to-participate/org-details/999999999/project/101124670/program/43392145/details

[10] CleanSeaNet hosted by the European Maritime Safety Agency: https://www.emsa.europa.eu/csn-menu.html

[11] https://civil-protection-humanitarian-aid.ec.europa.eu/what/civil-protection/eu-civil-protection-mechanism_en via the Emergency Response Coordination Centre.

[12] https://enlargement.ec.europa.eu/european-neighbourhood-policy/countries-region/ukraine/ukraine-investment-framework_en

[13] https://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/39779/st10219-en19.pdf — The tenth paragraph refers to the EU’s accession to the Black Sea Commission, as follows: ‘(…) The Council reaffirms the EU’s aim to become a full member of the Commission on the Protection of the Black Sea against Pollution. The Council particularly takes into account the need for enhanced international cooperation for addressing the environmental and climate challenges in the Black Sea. (…)’.
Last updated: 6 March 2025
MIL OSI Europe News –
March 7, 2025
MIL-OSI Europe: MOTION FOR A RESOLUTION on the white paper on the future of European defence – B10-0147/2025

Source: European Parliament

Reinier Van Lanschot, Mārtiņš Staķis, Ville Niinistö, Damian Boeselager, Hannah Neumann, Maria Ohisalo, Sergey Lagodinsky, Virginijus Sinkevičius
on behalf of the Verts/ALE Group

B10‑0147/2025

European Parliament resolution on the white paper on the future of European defence

(2025/2565(RSP))

The European Parliament,

– having regard to its previous resolutions on Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine,

– having regard its recommendation of 8 June 2022 to the Council and the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy on the EU’s Foreign, Security and Defence Policy after the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine [1],

– having regard to the UN Charter,

– having regard to the Strategic Compass for Security and Defence, adopted by the Council on 21 March 2022,

– having regard to the report by Sauli Niinistö, Special Adviser to the President of the European Commission, of 30 October 2024 entitled ‘Safer Together – Strengthening Europe’s Civilian and Military Preparedness and Readiness’,

– having regard to Rule 136(2) of its Rules of Procedure,

A. whereas the President of the European Commission tasked the Commissioner for Defence and Space and the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy with presenting a white paper on the future of European defence;

B. whereas Parliament and experts have called for a white paper on defence for more than a decade;

C. whereas the Strategic Compass was mainly drafted and negotiated before 24 February 2022; whereas the Strategic Compass is a very broad strategy that provides little guidance with regards to the urgent need to accomplish defence readiness and provide deterrence and defence capabilities to prepare for the most urgent military contingency;

D. whereas there is an urgent need to strengthen parliamentary oversight of European defence in order to guarantee a sound democratic basis for this crucial policy area;

E. whereas the European defence industrial actors not only face challenges but have also been able to profit from a much higher demand for defence products since February 2022, which has led to record profits, especially among prime contractors;

F. whereas innovative defence and dual-use start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have not, in a comparable manner, been able to profit from relevant EU funds or orders from and funding by national governments compared to prime contractors;

G. whereas the combined military spending efforts of EU Member States already exceed that of Russia but suffer from a lack of economies of scale and focus, highlighting the need for more efficiency and the streamlining of military expenses, in addition to the need for fresh investment;

H. whereas the many concrete recommendations contained in the Niinistö report should guide the work on the white paper also because the report presents a comprehensive and holistic approach to preparedness and readiness that encompasses all civilian and military aspects; whereas the report underlines that the EU does not have a plan on what to do in the event of an armed attack against a Member State and that the EU currently lacks the comprehensive capacity to bring all necessary EU resources together in a coordinated manner across institutional and operational silos;

I. whereas hybrid threats are designed to operate in the grey zone between peace and war, combining conventional and unconventional methods such as sabotage, espionage and political infiltration to undermine the EU’s stability and resilience; whereas cyberattacks have become a central element of these campaigns, exploiting the increasing digitalisation of critical sectors such as healthcare, finance and energy, causing cascading disruptions with potentially severe economic and societal consequences; whereas foreign information manipulation and interference complements these operations through the spreading of disinformation and propaganda to erode trust in democratic institutions and polarise public opinion; whereas the growing complexity, frequency and intensity of these threats underscore the pressing need to identify and implement effective solutions for safeguarding the EU’s security and resilience;

J. whereas the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine is a wake-up call for the EU, presenting an immediate threat to the European and global security order and to the security of the EU and its Member States; whereas this conflict shows the urgent need for the Member States to define a common perception of threats and demonstrate genuine solidarity with the frontline Member States;

K. whereas the EU’s ability to take decisive action in response to external threats has been repeatedly hampered by the requirement for unanimity, with certain Member States blocking or delaying critical military aid to Ukraine and hence undermining European security;

L. whereas the Trump administration is proposing a normalisation of ties with Russia, and has threatened to withdraw the US military from the European continent; whereas it appears that the US administration has ceased to be a reliable ally within NATO, which has negative repercussions for the collective territorial defence of its members;

1. Stresses the seriousness of the threats to the security of the European continent, which have reached a level unprecedented since the Second World War; expresses deep concern at the rise of geopolitical fractures, also within the West, new and renewed imperialist ambitions for domination by authoritarian powers, systemic rivalry between great powers, nationalist unilateralism, the primary and growing use of force, and violence by certain states and non-state actors in order to promote their political and economic interests or to resolve disputes;

2. Recalls that the EU is a peace project and should strive towards peace and stability while condemning aggression; underlines that, in order to achieve peace and stability, we must support Ukraine and become more resilient ourselves;

3. Believes that the war of aggression against Ukraine was part of Putin’s plan to reshape the Euro-Atlantic security architecture and that this plan has been thwarted thanks to the Ukrainian people’s heroic defence;

4. Underlines that Russian acts of sabotage against critical European infrastructure, and Russia’s manipulation of and interference in EU and NATO countries, have significantly increased; stresses that experts believe that Russia might further escalate its aggressive acts and also attack EU Member States with conventional armed forces during the coming years;

5. Deplores the fact that the President of the United States has suggested that the US may attempt to annex Greenland, which would be in breach of international law, create considerable instability for the Greenland Government and people and the whole region, further exacerbating the deterioration of relations within the Atlantic Alliance;

6. Calls, therefore, for the EU to increase its efforts to shift the trajectory of Russia’s war against Ukraine and set the conditions for a just, comprehensive and lasting peace on Ukraine’s terms; underlines that defeating Russia in Ukraine and ensuring Ukraine’s future success are the most effective and cost-efficient investments in European security for the short and medium term;

7. Urges the Member States to provide more arms and ammunition to Ukraine, in as large quantities and as quickly as possible, to enable Ukraine to liberate its territory and deter further Russian attacks;

8. Calls for making a fast and significant increase in the financing of military support for Ukraine a key and structural component of the white paper; calls on the Member States to scale up direct investments in the capacity of the Ukrainian defence industry to mass-produce essential defence products (Danish model), specifically drones, air defence systems, artillery and long-range strike capabilities; proposes the allocation of a specific multibillion euro budget to the European Defence Industry Programme’s (EDIP) Ukraine Support Instrument reserved exactly for this purpose; stresses the need to explore legal avenues for fully seizing the frozen assets of sanctioned Russian individuals and the Russian Central Bank for use as grants for Ukraine’s expenditure on its defence and resilience needs and its reconstruction, in accordance with international law; condemns the veto imposed by the Hungarian Government on the European Peace Facility (EPF), which blocks more than EUR 6 billion and renders the EPF almost useless; stresses, further, the urgent need also to consider the option of creating an alternative ad hoc arrangement for those European countries that wish to support Ukraine militarily and finance that aid jointly;

9. Demands the inclusion of a plan in the white paper that describes how the integration of the Ukrainian defence industry into the EU defence technological and industrial base (EDTIB) can be operationalised in the fastest and most efficient manner; recalls the urgency to properly finance EDIP’s Ukraine instrument; further proposes the provision of war insurance for critical EDTIB projects inside Ukraine; proposes the regular inclusion of Ukrainian Defence Ministry officials with observer status at meetings of relevant Council configurations;

10. Expects the white paper on EU defence to define a new framework and the extent to which the EU must accomplish defence readiness and preparedness, in view of the most severe military contingencies, deter potential aggressors and defend itself also to assist NATO allies that are also EU Member States to become a credible European pillar in NATO;

11. Stresses that the time has come to use the white paper process to clearly define what is meant by a true European defence union; recalls that the adoption of the Strategic Compass was only a starting point, but that its implementation remains necessary and requires an update to reflect the goals of deterrence and defence readiness;

12. Deplores the reluctance of the Council and the EU Member States when it comes to addressing deep structural challenges of the European defence industrial landscape and the lack of ambition as regards cooperation between their armed forces at EU level; calls on the Member States to join forces and support a quantum leap towards a very ambitious and comprehensive framework on defence;

13. Welcomes in principle the announcements made by the President of the Commission on 4 March 2025 regarding a ‘re-arm Europe’ initiative; stresses, however, that the planned investments should address the lack of cooperation and coordination between Member States, including measures guaranteeing full interoperability and making joint procurement the rule;

14. Urges the Commission, the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (VP/HR) and the Member States to use the white paper process for outlining a comprehensive framework that is composed of at least the following key components:

(a) a precise description of scenarios in which the EU and its Member States would use security and military instruments that include the latest risk and threat assessments and range from the most extreme military contingencies to crisis management abroad,

(b) elements of a military doctrine which describe in detail the military tasks related to the different scenarios, including cooperation with NATO, in particular through a more precise operationalisation and routine exercises for scenarios under Article 42(7) of the Treaty on European Union (TEU),

(c) revised and adapted military headline goals, closely coordinated with the NATO Defence Planning Process, and a precise description of the necessary quantity and quality of military personnel, including training requirements and key military capabilities that are fully synchronised with the new NATO Force Model as regards EU NATO countries, such as strategic enablers, but also ammunition stocks, in order to fulfil current force generation targets,

(d) proposals regarding armed forces cooperation structures that go beyond ad hoc arrangements, such as EU Battlegroups, including a strengthened Rapid Deployment Capacity (RDC), multinationally crewed strategic enablers (based on the Airborne Warning and Control System – AWACS – model) at EU level and additional permanent multinational military units with sufficient capabilities to provide deterrence and defence,

(e) a description of the key parameters necessary for the establishment of an efficient and competitive single market for defence that would help Member States to reach the capability headline goals necessary for full defence readiness and equip our closest allies, such as Ukraine;

15. Underlines that the EU must adopt a holistic and horizontal approach to security and defence by taking into account the many societal and systemic challenges it faces, such as climate change; emphasises the need for an impact assessment of current and future EU policies in order to find out how they can better support EU security and defence, including through other strategic objectives of the Union, especially the transition to a green, digital and just economy;

16. States that major geopolitical shifts, amplified by the return of large-scale wars in our neighbourhood, have threatened and keep threatening the security of the EU and its citizens, that ‘business as usual’ is not an option, and that, to face the threats, the EU and its Member States must make EU-level cooperation of their armed forces and their defence industry the rule in order to create a capabilities-based EU defence union which can overcome threats and attacks against EU security;

17. Strongly believes that more substantial progress needs to be made in operationalising Article 42(7) TEU and that a plan is needed on how to operationalise this solidarity policy in the white paper with respect to the specific character of the security and defence policy of certain Member States;

18. Insists on the need to ensure better cooperation and coordination by taking stock of the will of the EU and the UK to become closer security partners; calls strongly for the creation of a European security council to coordinate actions between like-minded countries willing to form a vanguard in European defence cooperation and integration; calls for this European security council to serve as the foundation for a new European defence union, bringing together like-minded Member States and strategic partners that share a common security vision and mutual trust;

19. Considers that current strategic documents, legislative proposals and studies such as the Strategic Compass, the European defence industrial strategy and the Niinistö report should finally inspire a concrete and comprehensive vision for the future of European defence, including specific goals, targets and roadmaps, which the white paper should constitute;

20. Calls for the EU to better link common security and defence policy (CSDP) instruments with internal security tools and to strengthen dual-use and civil-military cooperation at EU level;

21. Strongly supports the many good recommendations put forward by the Niinistö report; fully supports the report’s aim, which is ‘not to limit our level of preparedness to what is politically convenient’ but to address what is needed in order to cope with the most severe scenarios; insists on the importance of the upcoming preparedness Union strategy to put the EU on track for comprehensive preparedness, including a definition of EU-level vital societal and governmental functions, the development of EU-level preparedness baseline requirements for these functions, and ensuring the coherence of sectoral crisis plans at EU level; recommends, in particular, the Niinistö report recommendations aimed at empowering citizens to make societal resilience work, inspired by the Finnish concept of total defence;

22. Calls for the EU to develop an EU risk assessment to identify cross-sectoral threats and the risks facing the EU as a whole, and supports the embedding of the ‘preparedness by design’ principle across the EU; insists on the need to develop a mandatory ‘security and preparedness check’ for future impact assessments and ‘stress-tests’ for current legislation as proposed by Niinistö; believes that there is a need to assess whether there are specific challenges that undermine the timely completion of projects identified as critical for effective military deterrence and the rapid arrival of capabilities to the eastern flank for military contingency;

23. Invites the Commission and the Member States to explore the feasibility of an EU preparedness act to align EU and national efforts when possible;

24. Calls for the EU and the Member States to set up and conduct an EU comprehensive preparedness exercise to test high-level decision-making and operational coordination;

25. Calls for the CSDP to be guided by a human security approach and committed to the Women, Peace and Security Agenda; underlines the importance of other multilateral frameworks that strive to build a peaceful and stable future;

26. Calls on the Member States to push for the deletion of the unanimity rule in foreign and security policy in the Council; asks for an amendment to Article 46(6) TEU to allow for qualified majority voting instead of unanimity in the management of permanent structured cooperation, with the exception of decisions leading to the creation of military missions or operations with an executive mandate under the CSDP, which must remain under unanimity;

27. Proposes the strengthening of Parliament’s oversight and scrutiny role in line with the EU expanding its role in defence, including via delegated acts for the work programmes of the current and future defence industrial programmes and instruments that would allow for their implementation to be scrutinised, in particular the priorities set by the Commission concerning projects on priority capabilities; calls for a Parliament representative to be appointed to the new defence industrial readiness board proposed in EDIP, where currently none is provided for;

28. Believes that the EU must acquire a clear understanding of what the actual gap is between the capability targets and defence capabilities of the Member States; stresses the need to ramp up defence industry production, as well as to have ever-ready production units to respond to foreign attacks or specific needs of its strategic partners;

29. Considers regular threat analyses to be an absolute necessity and proposes synchronising their planning cycle with similar regular threat analyses within NATO and by key non-NATO partners;

30. Reiterates its call to strengthen EU-NATO cooperation in order to build a more European NATO, particularly by fully aligning the EU’s Strategic Compass and NATO’s strategic concept, the EU’s Capability Development Plan and NATO’s Defence Planning Process capability targets, except for areas where there are clear special interests for the EU only; proposes the appointment of a permanent EU representative to NATO, including to the military committee on information exchange and the respective military operations;

31. Calls for the EU to address the critical defence capability gaps and shortfalls and focus efforts on specific projects of common European interest that are too expensive for a single Member State to procure, in particular strategic enablers, but also large stockpiles of critical equipment, in order to provide genuine EU added value, which could most efficiently be jointly procured and managed by an EU framework through a special off-budget instrument; proposes, in particular, the establishment of the following capabilities:

(a) integrated air defence and long-range strike systems, optimally by coordinating the ongoing development of the European Sky Shield Initiative (ESSI) with the European Long Range Strike Approach (ELSA),

(b) suppression of enemy air defences,

(c) multi-type drone force,

(d) electronic warfare,

(e) defensive and offensive cyber systems,

(f) AWACS, aerial refuelling and long-range transport,

(g) Command, control, communications and computers (C4) and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities and space assets critical for early warning, navigation, observation and communication,

(h) Main Ground Combat System (MGCS),

(i) Future Combat Aircraft System (FCAS);

32. Urges the EU and the Member States to move from a ‘flow’ approach to a ‘stock’ approach, with mandatory targets for critical defence equipment; points to the need to ensure the socially and environmentally sustainable provision of relevant raw materials and to implement policies to close gaps in production and the labour market; stresses the urgent need to make defence production and stocking of ammunition and other products more security-relevant by developing plans on how to have a more decentralised and resilient network and joint stocks building on ‘readiness pools’ in regions facing a higher threat level and the possibility of large-scale conventional warfare;

33. Calls for the EU to urgently adapt its tools to new realities by designing an administrative capacity to move much faster when faced with wars or other large-scale crises; stresses that this can be done by designing and putting in place binding rules, which can be triggered in emergency situations to accelerate administrative and legal procedures, and taking measures in the input side of the supply chain, for the quick production and delivery of military goods, or the construction of infrastructure projects for European mobility, identified as critical for defence;

34. Urges the EU to take immediate action to pool resources and expertise in the field of cybersecurity, recognising that individual Member States face limited capabilities in this domain; strongly advocates for the development of a unified European approach to cyber forces; further insists on the swift creation of joint European cyber capabilities to effectively address the common challenges faced by all Member States in the rapidly evolving threat landscape, thereby strengthening the EU’s collective resilience and strategic autonomy in the digital realm;

35. Calls for the EU to use the white paper to describe a plan that helps to remove unnecessary national regulatory obstacles that slow down military mobility without undermining public security; considers that the definition of military mobility should apply to dual-use infrastructures that cover all logistical aspects of mobility, and that for dual-use projects, adequate criteria should be properly applied in terms of funding provisions, in particular at EU level; stresses the need for significant investments in military mobility infrastructures to enhance cargo airlift capabilities, camps, depots, ports, air, sea and rail platforms, railway lines, railroad terminals, waterways, roads and bridges;

36. Reiterates its full support for the RDC to achieve full operational capability at the latest by mid-2025, with at least 5 000 troops available for rescue and evacuation tasks, initial entry and stabilisation operations or temporary reinforcement of missions; proposes upgrading the RDC by transforming it into a permanent multinational force with its own strategic enablers and command and control, learning from the failed experience of the ad hoc EU Battlegroups;

37. Calls on the VP/HR to launch a discussion with Member States in order to create additional permanent multinational units to respond to the changed threat landscape for the EU since the decision to create the RDC, especially in the light of Trump’s recent rapprochement towards Putin and comments regarding Greenland, which have increased the need for effective European deterrence and defence in line with the most extreme military contingencies;

38. Proposes strengthening the current Eurocorps and making it a multinational corps with its own strategic enablers and command and control to which national brigades can be permanently attached with standardised, jointly procured equipment; stresses that such a multinational European corps can enable smaller Member States to fulfil their current force-generation targets, provide industry with aggregate demand through standardised, large-scale equipment orders and provide the EU with its own capability focused on deterrence and defence, including for candidate countries;

39. Proposes the joint creation of crewed and owned strategic enablers at EU level, based on the model of NATO’s AWACS, which are too expensive for individual Member States and important for the security of the EU as a whole;

40. Calls for the European Air Transport Command to be transformed into an ‘EU crisis-response air fleet’ comprising military transport aircraft held at European level and made available to Member States for deployments of equipment or troops, emergency evacuations or civil security missions;

41. Reiterates its call for the Military Planning and Conduct Capability (MPCC) to benefit from adequate premises, staff, enhanced planning, command and control, and effective communication and information systems;

42. Calls for a more ambitious concept for military training and relevant planning, command and control elements at EU level to be part of the white paper action plan, such as a fully equipped and well-staffed MPCC; believes that the EU must expand the training of Ukrainian forces in line with Ukrainian needs to enable a higher level of operational coordination between units, allow for the most effective force generation possible, and create conditions for European armed forces to learn lessons from them;

43. Urges the EU Member States to decide on a united and clear medium- and long-term vision for the European defence industry aimed at helping to meet the capability headline goals;

44. Stresses the urgent need to change the way defence industrial programmes are implemented across the EU; believes that it is of crucial importance to synchronise their work programmes with the revised headline goals in order to be able to focus on the most urgent and militarily important capability gaps; underlines the importance of overcoming a very broad distribution of scarce financial resources and the need to prevent any further ‘dual sourcing’ or similar duplications at EU level that would add to a high amount of duplications in Europe and to the low efficiency rate of the defence industrial base, which is still characterised by fragmentation;

45. Stresses that capabilities and resources must be increased, and that the fragmentation of the defence market must be overcome via the creation of a single market for defence, where binding common rules apply guaranteeing fair competition and full interoperability of defence products; shares the view contained in Mario Draghi’s report on the future of European competitiveness that the EU must urgently boost competitiveness in the sector by various means, such as mergers (inspired by best practice, such as that of Airbus), and more competition between traditionally nationally entrenched defence firms, and decide on incentives directed towards the EU defence industry for sufficiently large public and private investments in security and defence;

46. Believes that the white paper should build on the European defence industrial strategy (EDIS), in particular EDIP, and also develop a concept for a wartime economic cooperation contingency plan to prepare for mutual support in case of large-scale security crises, and deepen wartime economic communication to provide early warnings of hard, hybrid and cyber threats;

47. Stresses that a single European defence market is a priority, as fragmentation and a lack of competitiveness hamper the capacity of the EU to assume more responsibility as a security provider; deplores the fact that neither the EU defence industrial programmes nor the increasing national defence budgets have led to a surge in EU-level defence industrial cooperation that would have allowed Member States to reach their own 2007 cooperation targets as set in the European Defence Agency (EDA) framework; recalls the persistent low levels of European collaboration since 24 February 2022, which, for research and development (R&D), were 14 % in 2022 and 6 % in 2023, and for joint procurement 18 % in 2023, while the EDA was unable to provide data for 2023 (but stressed that there was ‘a temporary slowdown’); stresses the urgent need to analyse the reasons for the unwillingness of Member States to use EU-level cooperation and see it as the main tool for defence investment;

48. Strongly supports the idea to make EU-level cooperation the rule in the European defence industrial sector and commit to concrete numerical targets for cooperation as presented in EDIS, which focus in particular on joint procurement (at least 40 % by 2030), intra-EU trade (at least 35 % by 2030), and procurement of EU-made defence products (at least 50 % by 2030 and 60 % by 2035);

49. Urges the Commission and the Council to address the dual challenge of joint military equipment production and its effective utilisation across Member States; calls for a comprehensive strategy to guarantee increased interoperability through the promotion of agreed civil and military standards, such as NATO standardisation agreements, within EU defence industrial programmes; demands a commitment to tying the funding of current and future instruments to the standardisation of and convergence on certification by NATO allies and to make current standards more precise; calls on the Commission to present concrete plans to overcome interoperability obstacles and ensure the efficient utilisation of jointly produced equipment by all participating Member States;

50. Insists on the importance of European defence projects of common interest as presented in EDIP, which are critical to European defence readiness and preparedness; believes that these should support the industrial and technological capacities that underpin common capability priorities and that cannot be implemented alone, such as strategic enablers; proposes that, based on the capabilities’ headline goals, the Commissioner for Defence create a clear ‘output plan’ listing relevant quantified targets not just for strategic enablers but also for the most critical large-scale equipment needs, such as MGCS, FCAS and ESSI and ELSA, which would then be jointly procured and maintained throughout the life cycle of the product in order to achieve economies of scale and interoperability in the most effective and fastest way;

51. Believes that a competitive and resilient European defence industry will also lead to a restructuring of the industrial landscape, including through mergers, which would also reduce the number of parallel programmes that waste financial resources, as well as a better regional distribution of production sites; considers that our defence policies should encourage the growth of EU centres of excellence, also according to the criteria of decentralisation, security and resilience; stresses the need to massively boost start-ups, scale-ups and SMEs in the sector as a priority and as a structural element of the section of the white paper pertaining to the single market for defence; stresses that for well-established or systemic actors in the defence sector, public investment should be accompanied by additional safeguards to ensure that public money is reinvested and not used for the purpose of generating profits for their shareholders, such as by windfall profit taxes;

52. Proposes to create European regional EDTIB clusters uniting research, development, production and maintenance facilities to create regional economies of scale and focus areas of technological specialisation; calls for these clusters to be strategically spread throughout the EU to allow for continued manufacturing in times of crisis and to more evenly distribute the economic opportunities for SMEs and Member States with relatively small defence industries; calls for these clusters to be aligned with EDIP’s proposal for the Structure for European Armament Programme;

53. Calls for more coherence in support of companies by reducing unnecessary administrative burdens and cutting red tape, and ensuring much easier access for small- and mid-cap companies within the defence sector;

54. Calls for a comprehensive strategy to leverage current instruments such as the Defence Equity Facility and new initiatives such as EDIP’s Fund to Accelerate Defence Supply Chain Transformation; demands concrete commitments to increase the amount of funding per SME while ensuring transparency and accountability; requests the implementation of robust monitoring mechanisms to ensure that funds drive innovation and competitiveness among SMEs without distorting the market; demands, further, regular reporting on the impact and effectiveness of these financial instruments in supporting start-ups and SMEs in the defence industry and dual-use sector;

55. Calls on the Commission to design a successor to the European Defence Fund (EDF) that supports common research and innovation all along the supply chain and lay the conditions to address technological challenges and provide European solutions to key capabilities gaps; calls for the establishment of a Commission agency with a specific focus on R&D with dual-use potential, taking inspiration from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; stresses the need to put a strong emphasis on EU-level support for the most disruptive and innovative technology via the creation of an accelerator hub for researching, developing and testing new breakthrough defence technologies, which would also contribute to economic competitiveness, bringing together industry, governments and the expert community; underlines that this organisation should nurture a risk-taking culture and be highly flexible by design; proposes, as a first step, that funding allocation should focus on a limited number of critical projects, including decarbonised defence and novel deterrence capabilities;

56. Calls for the strengthening of energy resilience and the climate and environmental transition dimension under the successor to the EDF, and for the climate-proofing and decarbonisation (covering both adaptation and mitigation) of EU defence by design and across the five dimensions: operational, capability planning and development, multi-stakeholder engagement, governance, and R&D, for the benefit of the performance of military capabilities, the resilience of armed forces, and thus the competitiveness of the EDTIB;

57. Is deeply convinced that the EU-level instruments should prioritise and massively increase support for SMEs and start-ups in the dual-use and defence sector; stresses the need to support SMEs and start-ups in bringing successfully tested prototypes to the market, including the scaling up of production; underlines the need to bridge the current funding gap as regards these important steps that would strengthen the EDTIB, including in close cooperation with the Ukrainian technological and defence industrial base;

58. Insists on the need to remove barriers to market entry for defence products across the EU by reviewing the directives on the transfer of defence-related products and defence procurement; calls on the Commission to propose actions for better market access, smoother cross-border cooperation and increased security of supply, including by harmonising national export policies;

59. Stresses the need to develop an effective EU-level armaments policy that includes the establishment of a functioning and effective external trade dimension that aims to support partners that face threats from aggressive authoritarian regimes and prevents arms deliveries to undemocratic aggressive regimes and regimes that make illegal use of them as assessed under the relevant international human rights and humanitarian law, in line with the current eight criteria under the Council Common Position on arms exports [2]; stresses the need to overcome the very narrow and national interpretation of Article 346 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) in this respect;

60. Invites the Member States to actively participate in a priority-ordering mechanism for defence production which builds on security and defence capability mapping to help prioritise orders, contracts and the recruitment of employees in emergency situations;

61. Strongly believes that a European preference must be the cornerstone of EU policies related to the European defence market, as a strategic imperative aimed at protecting European know-how; underlines that the European preference principle must be reflected in EU defence regulations in clear and unambiguous eligibility criteria; underlines, however, that exceptions for emergency military contingencies and projects critical for ensuring defence readiness should be built into these criteria;

62. Calls for a crisis response instrument for securing European sovereignty based on the model of the US Defense Production Act, so that the EU has a tool which can be activated to react quickly to emergency wartime or crisis needs; calls for such a tool to include the following key components:

(a) joint procurement of specific defence products,

(b) prioritising the provision of critical materials, and prioritising orders, for specific supply chains, such as artillery munitions,

(c) fast-tracking administrative and legal procedures for moving military equipment and troops, and where possible the construction of (infrastructure) projects critical for military mobility or other military readiness priority areas, while avoiding the circumvention of environmental protection provisions and building in necessary safeguards;

63. Deplores the lack of willingness by Member States to invest in EU-level cooperation and urges them to reach the EU objectives on security and defence; highlights the fact that the cost of non-preparedness for the most extreme military contingencies would be higher than the cost of decisive EU preparedness; recalls that aggregate EU defence spending is insufficient and that very little national defence spending is coordinated or even pooled with other Member States or invested in European collaborative projects; calls for the EU and the Member States to work and agree on concrete measures and means for short- to long-term public and private investment;

64. Notes that, according to the Commission President, the defence spending gap currently stands at EUR 500 billion for the next decade, but that, if the EU needs to develop its own military capabilities, experts estimate that this amount will have to rise significantly; underlines that the EU budget alone cannot fill the gap, but has an important role to play;

65. Underlines that increases in defence investment should not compete with other public investment priorities, including social expenditure, territorial cohesion and climate transition, which are all relevant to our European security; reiterates that the most effective way to maintain such priorities is to release fresh investment for defence rather than repurpose already earmarked funding; further recalls that financing orientations should be anchored in a whole-of-society approach to resilience and therefore need to be broadly supported by European citizens, and that this support needs to be sustainable in the long term;

66. Opposes any proposal aimed at repurposing cohesion policy funds from their long-term objectives and recalls that only strengthening Europe’s social and economic fabric and reducing territorial disparities will contribute to the balanced development and stability of all EU regions, and will ultimately reinforce the EU’s ability to defend itself against disinformation and foreign influence;

67. Supports the Commission President’s announcement to create a new EU financial instrument to assist Member States in increasing their defence spending through loans backed by the EU budget; takes note of the intention to establish such a new instrument under Article 122 TFEU; recalls that while the EU Recovery Instrument, which allocated borrowed funds to various EU programmes, was established by a Council regulation under Article 122 TFEU, various EU programmes to which the resources were allocated, including the Recovery and Resilience Facility, were adopted through ‘codecision’, relying on Article 175 TFEU; calls on the Commission to adopt a similar legal structure, respecting the ordinary legislative procedure and ensuring the democratic legitimacy of any new EU financing instrument for defence;

68. Welcomes the further extension of the European Investment Bank (EIB) Group’s eligibility criteria to dual-use goods; welcomes the EIB Group’s 2022 Strategic European Security Initiative aimed at supporting innovation in dual-use technology; stresses that EIB investments should focus on innovative projects, but not expendable products such as ammunition; stresses that greater EIB investment in the defence sector can encourage commercial banks’ investment in the sector; calls on the EIB Group to review the impact of the extension of its new dual-use goods policy and insists that any further extension of lending in the sector should only take place if it has no negative impact on the overall financing costs of the bank or its investment pipeline, or on the contribution to financing the investment needed for enabling the EU to reach its climate goals;

69. Considers that, complementing joint debt, further defence lending should be dealt with in a separate bank, as investment in defence cannot in principle be considered an environmental, social and governance investment; calls, therefore, on the Commission and the Member States to establish, as a matter of urgency, a new defence bank modelled on the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development that could address the global perspective of securing defence lending, while protecting other investment and allowing for allies to join;

70. Takes note of the Commission President’s announcement on ‘activating the escape clause for defence investments’; underlines that, in view of other pressing policy priorities, the escape clause must be applied in a way that ensures that increases in defence expenditure do not lead to cuts in other areas and is conditional on being spent on developing common EU projects, including dual-use infrastructure such as railways, satellite systems and resilient power grids;

71. Stresses that the current political context demonstrates that the recently adopted EU economic governance framework deprives governments of the financial resources needed to respond to current and new challenges; underlines that prioritising one policy area over another exacerbates rather than mitigates the multiple crises the EU is facing; calls for a review of the EU fiscal rules framework that would provide the long-term funding certainty required for investment in promoting the just transition, expanding European defence production capabilities and developing dual-use infrastructure, thereby underpinning a truly coordinated EU approach to investment policy;

72. Insists that urgent needs cannot wait for the next multiannual financial framework (MMF); believes that, as long as Member States refuse to allocate more resources to a higher overall EU budget, including the creation of new own resources, and given the unanimity requirement to change both the MMF Regulation [3] and the Council’s Own-Resources Decision [4], and given the urgency, solutions for alternative funding must be considered without delay, including:

(a) the urgent launch of a discussion with a view to establishing another off-budget financial facility [5] which would sufficiently pool and Europeanise parts of national defence budgets at EU level and address the entire life cycle of military capabilities, from collaborative R&D and joint procurement to joint maintenance, training and security of supply, and which is, like the current off-budget EPF, open to non-EU countries such as Norway and the UK; stresses therefore the need to improve decision-making and oversight procedures compared to the current EPF governance model,

(b) the issuance of EU risk guarantees by the Commission to lower interest rates for participants in EU-level projects identified as critical for defence readiness,

(c) a new EU debt programme along the lines of the NextGenerationEU backed by genuine own resources to repay the borrowed funds,

(d) the creation of new genuine EU own resources to create additional revenue flows to finance security- and defence-related investments at EU level,

(e) greater mobilisation of equity and private capital; reiterates therefore its call for more private investment in EU defence,

(f) the creation of specific financial products so that private banks invest more in the defence sector,

(g) the development of emergency procedures for projects established in response to major crises or wars;

73. Believes that the next MFF should have a greater allocation of funds for common security and be more flexible in order to react to unforeseen crises and emergencies;

74. Welcomes the proposals made in the recent Niinistö report as regards the financing of European defence; supports the setting up of a defending Europe facility and a securing Europe facility; equally welcomes and supports the proposal to establish an investment guarantee programme based on the model of InvestEU with open architecture to trigger private sector investment and to issue a ‘European preparedness bond standard’;

75. Insists that robust mechanisms be implemented to ensure the efficient use of scarce EU budget resources and prevent any duplication of efforts in defence projects; requests a comprehensive review of current oversight procedures and the development of a transparent framework for monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of EU-funded defence initiatives;

76. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Commissioner for Defence and Space, the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, the Council and the Commission.

MIL OSI Europe News –

March 7, 2025
MIL-OSI Europe: Answer to a written question – Does the Commission recognise Member States’ sovereignty to hold elections? – P-000353/2025(ASW)

Source: European Parliament

The Commission does not comment on press articles.

The conduct and organisation of elections are the competence and responsibility of the Member States, in accordance with their constitutional and legislative rules, subject to EU law and their international obligations. National competent authorities and courts have the primary responsibility of ensuring compliance with these rules.

The rule of law, respect for fundamental rights and democracy are founding values of the EU as provided in Article 2 of the Treaty on the European Union (TEU).

The Commission, together with all other EU institutions and the Member States, is responsible under the Treaties for upholding these values. This includes the power for the Commission, where relevant, to initiate the procedure referred to in Article 7 TEU.

Last updated: 6 March 2025

MIL OSI Europe News –

March 7, 2025
MIL-OSI Europe: Answer to a written question – Number of detections per EU port – E-002591/2024(ASW)
Source: European Parliament
Monthly reports of harmful organisms detected in imported plants, plant products and other objects are based on data recorded in TRACES[1] by the competent authorities of the Member States and Switzerland.

The rules on official controls are laid down in Regulation (EU) 2017/625[2] as regards consignments entering from third countries that might pose a risk to plant health in accordance with Regulation (EU) 2016/2031[3].

The Member States ensure the uniform implementation of these rules. Therefore, the outcome of the official controls performed and recorded in TRACES by the competent authorities of the border control posts of the EU is published by the Commission as occurring at EU borders[4], rather than at specific points of entry.

During the month of October 2024, the competent authorities of the EU conducted a total of 43 443 physical checks on consignments of plants, plant and other products from third countries entering the Union territory.

[1] The Commission’s online platform for animal and plant health certification required for the importation of animals, animal products, food and feed of non-animal origin and plants into the European Union, and the intra-EU trade and EU exports of animals and certain animal products — TRACES: https://food.ec.europa.eu/horizontal-topics/traces_en#traces-at-a-glance

[2] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:02017R0625-20220128&qid=1736852032353

[3] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:02016R2031-20191214&qid=1736852094734

[4] Interceptions https://food.ec.europa.eu/plants/plant-health-and-biosecurity/europhyt/interceptions_en
Last updated: 6 March 2025
MIL OSI Europe News –
March 7, 2025
MIL-OSI Europe: Answer to a written question – Lack of transparency in the Ministry of Education and Merit’s decision not to publish the reserve lists of NRRP competitions for teaching posts – E-003076/2024(ASW)
Source: European Parliament
The Commission does not generally oversee internal competition mechanisms, which fall within the scope of competences of the Member State, without prejudice to its role as guardian of the Treaties.

Regarding the Recovery and Resilience Facility, the Commission is working closely with the Italian authorities to ensure the effective implementation of Italy’s national recovery and resilience plan (NRRP), including the reform of the teacher recruitment system in Italy ( Reform 2.1, Component 1, Mission 4 of the NRRP).

In addition, the Council Implementing Decision (CID) approving the assessment of the recovery and resilience plan for Italy[1] only determines the requirements for eligibility under the reformed system and the number of teachers to be recruited, and does not concern a recruitment approach across competitions, nor a single ranking system.

Specifically, the CID does not contain specific conditions regarding the recruitment of eligible candidates from previous NRRP competitions.

Overall, the recruitment procedures organised by Italy are competitive processes and qualifying examinations. They are designed to select candidates with the highest qualifying scores, in line with the number of available positions.

While candidates who exceed the minimum threshold but do not rank among the top scorers are considered successful in meeting the eligibility criteria, they are not guaranteed immediate employment and may need to participate in future competitions.

[1] https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-15114-2024-ADD-1-REV-1/en/pdf
Last updated: 6 March 2025
MIL OSI Europe News –
March 7, 2025
MIL-OSI Europe: Answer to a written question – Untapped potential of AI and revitalising the technology sector and innovative national and European companies – E-002670/2024(ASW)
Source: European Parliament

The Commission oversees several actions to make the EU a leading player in artificial intelligence (AI) and increase competitiveness.

Support for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) is delivered via two initiatives of the Digital Europe Programme (DEP)[1]: European Digital Innovation Hubs (EDIHs)[2] and Testing Experimentation Facilities (TEFs)[3].

Over 150 EDIHs have delivered over 20 000 services to SMEs to support their digitalisation and use of AI. TEFs in four sectors ( healthcare, manufacturing, smart cities and agri-food) help SMEs test AI. The Commission has financed the AI on Demand Platform[4] to help SMEs access AI tools and datasets.

In addition, at the Action Summit in Paris, the Commission launched InvestAI, an initiative to mobilise EUR 200 billion for AI investment[5] including a new European fund of EUR 20 billion for AI gigafactories needed to allow open, collaborative development of AI models and to make Europe an AI continent.

The Chips Act[6] aims to address semiconductor shortages and strengthen Europe’s technological leadership. It mobilises over EUR 43 billion of investments for manufacturing facilities to ensure resilience of the Union’s semiconductor sector.

Regarding company law, the Commission is preparing a proposal for a 28th regime which will simplifies applicable rules. An EU Startup and Scaleup Strategy will also address obstacles preventing new companies from emerging and scaling.

From 2021 to 2027[7], over EUR 4 billion of EU funding is available for AI research and innovation activities under Horizon Europe[8] and DEP[9].

A Commission recommendation[10] encourages businesses to make use of data-analysis, automated recognition and machine learning to detect counterfeits online.

To limit the impact of energy prices the Commission will present an Action Plan on Affordable Energy.
- [1] https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/activities/digital-programme
- [2] https://european-digital-innovation-hubs.ec.europa.eu/edih-catalogue
- [3] https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/activities/testing-and-experimentation-facilities
- [4] https://www.ai4europe.eu
- [5] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_467
- [6] Regulation (EU) 2023/1781 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 September 2023 establishing a framework of measures for strengthening Europe’s semiconductor ecosystem and amending Regulation (EU) 2021/694 (Chips Act) (OJ L 229, 18.9.2023, p. 1, ELI: http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/2023/1781/oj).
- [7] https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/european-ai-research
- [8] https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/funding/funding-opportunities/funding-programmes-and-open-calls/horizon-europe_en
- [9] https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/activities/digital-programme
- [10] Commission Recommendation on measures to combat counterfeiting and enhance the enforcement of intellectual property rights: https://single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu/publications/commission-recommendation-measures-combat-counterfeiting-and-enhance-enforcement-intellectual_en
MIL OSI Europe News –
March 7, 2025
MIL-OSI Europe: Answer to a written question – Greek and Christian communities suffering in Aleppo – E-002792/2024(ASW)
Source: European Parliament

The fall of Assad’s criminal[1] regime marks a historic moment for the Syrian people, who — irrespective of religion and ethnicity — have endured immense suffering under its rule.

This is a moment of hope, but also uncertainty, and all Syrians, in the country and the diaspora, must have an opportunity to reunify, stabilise and rebuild their country. It is essential that all Syrians be protected and that the transition be inclusive[2] of all components of society.

Whereas the competence for safety and diplomatic protection of citizens lies primarily with the Member States, the EU supports Member States’ efforts to evacuate or repatriate citizens from conflict zones through the EU Civil Protection Mechanism[3], which coordinates disaster response and contributes to transport and operational support.

The EU is actively engaging with Syria’s new leadership to prevent expansion of terrorism working with partners within the Global Coalition against Da’esh[4] to share information, assessing and addressing the threat posed by Da’esh and its affiliates.

EU measures include counter-terrorism cooperation with regional partners; multilateral engagement with the United Nations (UN) and with the Global Counterterrorism Forum[5] as co-chair; security measures; support for repatriation including financial support through the EU-UN Global Terrorism Threats Facility[6], rehabilitation, and reintegration; humanitarian aid, including mental health services; funding programmes to prevent and counter violent extremism, radicalisation and propaganda.

The EU provides humanitarian aid on a needs basis. Despite the highly challenging security environment, EU humanitarian partners, together with local organisations, are providing emergency assistance to all affected communities throughout the country.
- [1] As set out in the Foreign Affairs Council conclusions on the situation in the Middle East of 27 January 2025, https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/meetings/fac/2025/01/27/
- [2] See footnote 1.
- [3] https://civil-protection-humanitarian-aid.ec.europa.eu/what/civil-protection/eu-civil-protection-mechanism_en
- [4] https://theglobalcoalition.org/en/
- [5] https://www.thegctf.org/
- [6] https://www.un.org/counterterrorism/EU-UN-Global-Terrorism-Threats-Facility
MIL OSI Europe News –
March 7, 2025
MIL-OSI Europe: Answer to a written question – Mercosur – E-002261/2024(ASW)
Source: European Parliament
The EU-Mercosur agreement involves the Member States and the Mercosur countries[1]. Ukraine is not part of Mercosur and therefore the EU-Mercosur agreement will not regulate trade between the EU and Ukraine.

Regarding sensitive EU agricultural products, such as beef, poultry, pigmeat, sugar, rice, honey and sweetcorn the EU has negotiated limited concessions in the form of tariff rate quotas that represent a small fraction of EU consumption, and using quota segmentation for some products, to avoid concentrating imports in the most sensitive part of the market.

These partial openings will be introduced in gradual stages to allow for a smooth transition. The text of the 2019 agreement is publicly available at the Directorate General for Trade and Economic Security website[2].

On 6 December 2024 at the Mercosur Summit in Montevideo, the EU and Mercosur reached a political agreement concluding the negotiations.

The text of the negotiated outcome was published simultaneously in the site of the Commission[3] and the official sites of the Mercosur partners on 10 December 2024.

[1] Mercosur countries are Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

[2] https://policy.trade.ec.europa.eu/eu-trade-relationships-country-and-region/countries-and-regions/mercosur/eu-mercosur-agreement/text-agreement_en

[3] See footnote 2.
Last updated: 6 March 2025
MIL OSI Europe News –
March 7, 2025
MIL-OSI Europe: Answer to a written question – Protection of European authors’ rights against possible fraud by Meta – E-000144/2025(ASW)
Source: European Parliament
Directive 2001/29/EC[1] grants exclusive rights to authors over their works, allowing them to authorise or prohibit the reproduction, communication to the public and distribution of such works, unless exceptions apply.

The Text and Data Mining (TDM) exception introduced in the 2019 Copyright Directive[2] applies only to reproductions of works to which the beneficiaries of the exception have lawful access, therefore excluding content obtained through websites making available copyright-infringing content.

In case of infringements, the authors may take action to enforce his/her rights. Directive 2004/48/EC[3], a minimum harmonisation measure, provides that certain measures, procedures and remedies should be available in Member States.

However, enforcement of rights is subject to the jurisdiction of national courts in individual Member States where an act takes place in the territory of the Member State. The Commission has no standing in the private enforcement of copyright before national courts.

The Commission will continue to promote the development of artificial intelligence (AI) in the EU, in the respect of copyright rules, by facilitating licensing between creative industries and AI companies.

[1] OJ L 167/10, 22.6.2001.

[2] OJ L 130/92, 17.5.2019.

[3] OJ L 157/45, 30.4.2004.
Last updated: 6 March 2025
MIL OSI Europe News –
March 7, 2025
MIL-OSI Europe: MOTION FOR A RESOLUTION on the white paper on the future of European defence – B10-0145/2025

Source: European Parliament

B10‑0145/2025

European Parliament resolution on the white paper on the future of European defence

(2025/2565(RSP))

The European Parliament,

– having regard to Articles 24(1), 42, 43 and 45 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU),

– having regard to the national security strategies of the Member States,

– having regard to Regulation (EU) 2023/1525 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 July 2023 on supporting ammunition production (ASAP)[1],

– having regard to Regulation (EU) 2023/2418 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 October 2023 on establishing an instrument for the reinforcement of the European defence industry through common procurement (EDIRPA)[2],

– having regard to the Strategic Compass for Security and Defence,

– having regard to Commission Recommendation (EU) 2023/2113 of 3 October 2023 on critical technology areas for the EU’s economic security for further risk assessment with Member States [3],

– having regard to the joint communication from the Commission and the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy of 10 March 2023 entitled ‘European Union Space Strategy for Security and Defence’ (JOIN(2023)0009),

– having regard to the report by Sauli Niinistö of 30 October 2024 entitled ‘Safer Together – Strengthening Europe’s Civilian and Military Preparedness and Readiness’,

– having regard to the report by Mario Draghi of 9 September 2024 entitled ‘The future of European competitiveness’,

– having regard to Special Report 04/2025 of the European Court of Auditors of 5 February 2025 entitled ‘EU military mobility: Full speed not reached due to design weaknesses and obstacles en route’,

– having regard to the three Joint Declarations on EU-NATO cooperation signed on 8 July 2016, 10 July 2018 and 10 January 2023,

– having regard to the Madrid Summit Declaration adopted by the NATO heads of state and government at the North Atlantic Council meeting in Madrid on 29 June 2022,

– having regard to the NATO 2022 Strategic Concept and the 2023 NATO Summit in Vilnius,

– having regard to the opening remarks made by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in Brussels at the Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting of 12 February 2025,

– having regard to the talks held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on 18 February 2025 between US and Russian negotiators,

– having regard to Rule 136(2) of its Rules of Procedure,

A. whereas the Commission announced the release of a white paper on the future of European defence, co-authored by Commissioner for Defence and Space Andrius Kubilius and Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas, by 19 March 2025; whereas this document will be the first of its kind produced by the EU and emulates similar documents published by Member States;

B. whereas the white paper must respect the limits set by the TEU in terms of foreign policy and defence and it must take note of the international context and the strategic environment in order to provide a perspective and proposals that will enable the strengthening of Europe’s security;

C. whereas the white paper on the future of European defence will provide the framework for future defence projects and regulations and will be a key point of reference for incoming negotiations on the next multiannual financial framework;

D. whereas the international order is profoundly destabilised and is restructuring; whereas the international rules and organisations that emerged from the Second World War and then from the end of the Cold War are in crisis; whereas international relations are increasingly characterised by uncertainty, and the tendency to resort to armed force to resolve international disagreements is growing;

E. whereas Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has profoundly destabilised the security order in Europe; whereas this unilateral aggression has accelerated the integration of Sweden and Finland into NATO; whereas this war has considerably deteriorated relations and exchanges between Russia and the countries of Europe;

F. whereas the war in Ukraine has highlighted the chronic underinvestment by Member States in their armed forces; whereas the stocks of arms and ammunition in Europe are largely insufficient; whereas certain critical military capabilities are not possessed by any European military; whereas the infrastructure that is essential for the security and proper functioning of European societies and economies is vulnerable; whereas some Member States have encountered significant difficulties in deploying and transporting military resources within the EU itself;

G. whereas the relations between the United States and China will structure, to a large extent, the future of international relations in the 21st century; whereas the United States no longer has the will to maintain the same level of military involvement in Europe; whereas the US Secretary of Defence has expressly spoken of a ‘division of labour’ between allies, with the Americans prioritising the Pacific region, while emphasising that Europeans must be responsible for the defence of Europe and must increase their capabilities accordingly;

H. whereas the European Union is composed of 27 sovereign states, with each having the sovereign right to determine its own foreign and defence policy;

I. whereas it is in the interest of the Member States to adopt a common policy on matters of common interest to them; whereas enhanced cooperation on defence matters is mutually beneficial if it improves the security of the Member States against any direct aggression or if it increases their capacity to respond to any threat to their territorial integrity, sovereignty or prosperity;

J. whereas the European defence market is too fragmented; whereas for a single armament type, there can be several or even dozens of different varieties of equipment in the EU, representing a collective loss of resources because of duplication, and preventing economies of scale;

K. whereas Article 24(1) TEU stipulates that decisions related to the common foreign and security policy and the common security and defence policy are taken unanimously by the Council; whereas Article 24(1) TEU also stipulates that the EU cannot adopt legislative acts on foreign affairs and defence; whereas Article 36 TEU stipulates that Parliament has a consultative role;

L. whereas, on 30 January 2025, 19 EU countries sent a letter to the European Investment Bank calling for it ‘to play an even stronger role in providing investment funding and leveraging private funding for the security and defence sector’;

1. Stresses that diplomatic and defence policy issues are primarily the prerogative of the Member States, which remain the most relevant and the only legitimate political units in the international order; respects the right of every Member State to determine its own foreign and security policy; insists on the importance of maintaining the principle of unanimity in the Council for all decisions related to the common foreign and security policy and the common security and defence policy;

2. Underlines that strengthening the Member States’ militaries, based on threats, is necessary to compensate for the security deficit caused by decades of underinvestment and the gradual disengagement of the United States; emphasises that this rearmament policy led by the Member States must not aim to escalate tensions in Europe, but rather aim to reach a level that will deter any hostile actions, establish a continental balance and maintain peace;

3. Notes that the United States remains the EU’s main military ally and is an essential member of NATO; insists that, irrespective of the political orientation of the White House, US foreign policy will continue to make the Asia-Pacific region a geostrategic priority and to perceive Europe as a secondary theatre; stresses that Member States must no longer subcontract their security and defence to other powers;

4. Underlines that NATO is a crucial partner in the collective defence architecture in Europe; takes note of the ambition of building a European pillar within NATO; considers that a greater contribution from European states within the alliance must, for the sake of consistency, result in a more balanced distribution of command posts in favour of European military personnel; stresses that stepping up the defence capabilities of European states can go hand in hand with the deepening of EU-NATO cooperation with due respect for the neutrality of the EU Member States that are not part of the NATO alliance;

5. Highlights the need to overcome the fragmentation of the EU’s internal market for defence products through greater cooperation between Member States and to collectively work on the interoperability of military capabilities; calls on the Member States to encourage cross-border defence procurement in order to strengthen intra-European industrial cooperation and achieve the objective of European strategic autonomy;

6. Stresses that greater cooperation in the defence sector must actively involve defence SMEs, not only large defence actors, and serve as a platform for SME development, providing greater opportunities for them to contribute to the EU’s technological base and enhance European strategic autonomy;

7. Notes, however, that the strengthening of the European defence industry must not result in the attribution of new competences to the Commission, which would be in breach of the Treaties and would undermine the sovereignty of Member States without increasing efficacy; reiterates, therefore, that decision-making regarding military requirements, the prioritisation of capability development and the purchase of defence products should remain within the remit of Member States; underlines that, despite the need for increased cooperation in the field of defence, such as on joint procurement and joint production, the Member States must retain full sovereignty over their arms export policies;

8. Calls for the co-legislators to establish the principle of a European preference in future European defence regulations, including in the European defence industrial plan, so that European funds benefit European companies on European soil, which will enhance our industrial defence capabilities and will reduce our dependences on non-EU countries; recalls that this regulation must in no way restrict the freedom of the Member States to determine their own arms procurement and import/export policy;

9. Calls on the NATO-affiliated Member States to cooperate in order to identify and fill critical capability gaps by building on and complementing NATO’s Defence Planning Process targets, which are required for sustained full-spectrum operations, including space systems and launchers, long-range missiles, integrated air and missile defence systems, ammunition production, artificial intelligence (AI), maritime drone capability, command and control capability, electronic warfare systems and air-to-air refuelling capacity;

10. Calls on non-neutral Member States to adequately invest in their infrastructure to guarantee optimal military mobility across Europe in line with their respective military agreements and alliances;

11. Emphasises the importance for European states to have the capacity and a framework to act independently within the NATO framework where possible and outside of the NATO framework if necessary; points out that the Rapid Deployment Capacity, an inter-state initiative under the control of the Member States, only comprised of 5 000 troops, does not allow for the possibility of engagement in a context of intense combat; reaffirms that it is in the Member States’ interest to strengthen their ability to fight together by conducting joint training and exercises that enhance the interoperability of the various national instruments;

12. Expresses the need to consider European defence in all its dimensions, including land, air, naval, space and cybernetic; notes that contemporary strategic issues have a growing naval dimension and that the powers challenging the international order are deploying naval capabilities at regional level; stresses the importance of European cooperation at sea and welcomes the current progress of Operation Aspides, the lessons from which must be put to good use; stresses that European strategic autonomy has a maritime and naval dimension, and that European navies should cooperate more closely to ensure the protection of their maritime areas, as well as their underwater or surface infrastructure; stresses that the principle of freedom of navigation must be protected and calls, therefore, for an increase in surveillance and the ability to react quickly in the event of threats arising in European seas;

13. Notes that space will increasingly become a key aspect of power and sovereignty; underlines that the Member States must maintain and guarantee their independent access to space; welcomes the launch of Ariane 6, but is concerned by the accumulated delays; draws attention to the need for the space sector to be industrialised to increase the number of rockets launched to put European satellites into orbit; welcomes the launch of the European satellite constellation IRIS², which should enable secure communications solutions for sovereign and military issues by 2030; emphasises the need for the future EU space law not to hamper the competitiveness of European companies and to apply constraints on non-EU players; notes the importance of Galileo, Europe’s global navigation satellite system;

14. Underlines that, unlike the United States (Buy America Act) and China (Government Procurement Law), the European space industry is not shielded from international competition and does not benefit from a European preference; calls on the Member States and the Commission to implement a European preference in space industry procurement and promote innovation, research and development; stresses that the European Space Agency’s principle of geographical return hampers innovative European SMEs and start-ups from receiving adequate funding and contributes to the fragmentation of the European space industry; calls on the European Space Agency to abolish the principle of geographical return and adopt an innovative and efficiency-based approach to space procurement rather than a geographically driven one;

15. Underlines that the strengthening of European defence capabilities will require significant financing; calls on banks, pension funds, insurance companies and other actors in the Member States to simplify and significantly increase the financing of projects and companies operating in the field of defence; insists that in the context of the urgent need to increase defence spending, financial institutions should not consider investments in the field of defence to be damaging for their reputation; rejects, however, the idea of issuing joint debt, such as defence Eurobonds, to support defence spending;

16. Notes the growing importance of AI in warfare, particularly in the development of drones and autonomous weapons; recognises the indigenous AI advances in warfare made by Ukraine and Israel, demonstrating that the Member States are equally capable of developing similar capabilities; highlights that recent breakthroughs, such as the one made by the Chinese AI computing start-up DeepSeek, demonstrate the feasibility of cost-competitive AI systems; calls on the Member States to accelerate the development of AI capabilities; underlines that the AI Act [4], set to be implemented in 2025, creates uncertainty regarding the production and development of dual-use AI systems, an ambiguity that could hinder the development of essential defence industry products; calls for this issue to be clarified to ensure that the European defence industry is not disadvantaged compared to its American and Chinese counterparts;

17. Stresses that a strong civilian manufacturing industry, particularly in the steelmaking, automotive, aerospace and shipbuilding sectors, is essential for deterrence and for maintaining long-term military and industrial capabilities in the event of conflict; notes the decline of these industries since the 1990s, especially in western Europe; calls on the Commission and the Council to safeguard the manufacturing industries that are vital to national security, including through the use of tariffs; urges the Commission to revise the Green Deal and revoke the net-neutrality goal, since it destroys manufacturing competitiveness and is responsible for the deindustrialisation of key industries in the Member States; stresses that the relocation of essential manufacturing industries to non-EU countries is counterproductive both in terms of global environmental impact and national security;

18. Expresses concern over the growing dependence of the European defence industry on foreign components, particularly rare earths and semiconductors, which are essential for advanced military technologies; calls on the Member States to intensify efforts to develop domestic rare earth mining and semiconductor manufacturing capabilities to safeguard the autonomy of the European defence industry in the event of conflicts or severe supply chain disruptions;

19. Welcomes the Dutch Government’s decision to tighten export control rules on advanced lithography systems, which are essential for semiconductor production; stresses that EU technological transfers to non-EU countries have significantly contributed to the rise of foreign competition and the deindustrialisation of Europe; encourages the Member States to impose stricter export controls on critical dual-use technologies and manufacturing products;

20. Notes that 80 % of EU data is stored and managed in the United States and other non-EU countries, where it may be subject to extraterritorial intervention under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the CLOUD Act, or China’s Data Security Law; stresses that protecting critical industrial and government data is essential to ensuring national security; welcomes the Swiss Government Cloud programme as a step toward cloud sovereignty and encourages the Member States to implement similar initiatives; encourages the Member States to strengthen regulations on telecommunications service providers, which are predominantly based outside Europe, creating a significant dependence on external actors;

21. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to Commissioner for Defence and Space Andrius Kubilius, Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas, the Commission, the European Council and the parliaments and governments of the Member States.

MIL OSI Europe News –

March 7, 2025
MIL-OSI Europe: MOTION FOR A RESOLUTION on the white paper on the future of European defence – B10-0148/2025

Source: European Parliament

Nathalie Loiseau, Petras Auštrevičius, Dan Barna, Helmut Brandstätter, Engin Eroglu, Bernard Guetta, Urmas Paet, Marie‑Agnes Strack‑Zimmermann, Hilde Vautmans, Dainius Žalimas, Michał Kobosko
on behalf of the Renew Group

B10‑0148/2025

European Parliament resolution on the white paper on the future of European defence

(2025/2565(RSP))

The European Parliament,

– having regard to Rule 136(2) of its Rules of Procedure,

A. whereas over the last decade, major geopolitical shifts, amplified by the return of large-scale wars in the EU’s neighbourhood, have threatened the security of the EU, its Member States and its citizens;

B. whereas the global order is fragmenting and is increasingly characterised by complex and entrenched instabilities;

C. whereas the EU cannot be secure without security in its immediate neighbourhood; whereas Ukraine’s capacity to resist Russia’s war of aggression is vital to EU security;

D. whereas recent statements by members of the US Administration, accompanied by the behaviour of the US leadership towards President Zelenskyy, reflect a shift in US foreign policy; whereas it is becoming increasingly clear that Europe needs to strengthen its own security and defence and must be in a position to help Ukraine win the war;

E. whereas the biggest and fastest growth in Russia’s military capabilities is taking place close to Russia’s borders with the West, while the EU is taking its time to enhance its defence capacity;

F. whereas there is an urgent need to further reform and strengthen the EU’s defence policy in the light of Ukraine’s recent war experience and the use of new war technologies;

G. whereas it is in the EU’s interest to see Ukraine as an integral part of a genuine European security system;

H. whereas, in their mission letters from the President of the European Commission, the Commissioner for Defence and Space and the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy were tasked with presenting a white paper on the future of European defence within the first 100 days of their mandate;

1. Considers that the EU must take urgent action to ensure its own autonomous security, strengthen useful partnerships with like-minded partners and significantly reduce its dependencies on other countries; stresses, therefore, that the EU is now facing a turning point in its history and construction; insists that ‘business as usual’ is no longer an option as it would mean the end of a safe and secure Europe; considers that the EU and its Member States have to choose between pulling together in a synchronised way and joining forces to overcome the threats and attacks against EU security, or standing alone at the mercy of aggressive adversaries and unreliable partners; recalls that Russia is the most significant direct threat to Europe’s security; emphasises, however, the fact that the instability in the EU’s Southern Neighbourhood must also be fully taken into consideration;

2. Underlines that the EU must now adopt a holistic and cross-cutting approach, integrating a defence and security dimension into most European policies, including adequate regulatory and financial instruments to address identified capability needs and gaps;

3. Believes therefore that the time has come for renewed political ambition to act and turn the EU into a genuine security provider, increase the EU’s defence readiness and build a true European Defence Union; recalls that the adoption of the Strategic Compass was a good starting point, but that it must still be implemented in a timely manner; welcomes the recent EU defence instruments; insists on the urgent need to change scale, as EU defence efforts cannot remain limited in size, fragmented in scope and lengthy in delivery; calls for a quantum leap and a new approach on defence, accompanied by strong choices and decisions, an action plan and a short-to-long-term defence investment plan to enhance the bloc’s security infrastructure, improve deterrence, respond to hybrid threats and attacks, guarantee the mobilisation of equity and private capital and develop strategic enablers and strategic weapons systems to enhance Europe’s collective military power and thus reduce its dependency on others;

4. Urges the EU to adopt a coherent, robust and comprehensive framework to strengthen its security and the security of its partners, to better identify potential future breaking points and prevent further crises, and, together with the Member States, to marshal responses similar to those required in times of war;

5. Expects the white paper on European defence to define this new framework and the extent to which the EU can help Europe anticipate and ready itself for the most extreme military contingencies, deter potential aggressors and defend itself both in the short and long term with a view to becoming a credible power and a European pillar within NATO;

6. Considers that common foreign and security policy (CSDP) missions and operations have to be reassessed and reviewed with this perspective in mind; insists that, to fulﬁl its role as an insurance policy for Europe’s security, the CSDP must become stronger and more agile, including by becoming the EU’s instrument to fight against hybrid warfare;

7. Stresses that capabilities and resources must be increased, and that the fragmentation of the defence market must be overcome; fully agrees with and shares the Draghi report’s [1] view that the EU and its Member States must urgently decide on incentives directed towards the EU defence industry and find creative solutions for large-scale public and private investments in security and defence;

8. Urges the EU and its Member States to significantly increase their efforts to decisively shift the trajectory of Russia’s war against Ukraine; underlines that such a shift depends now almost entirely on Europeans; urges the Member States, therefore, to provide more arms and ammunition to Ukraine; warns, ahead of any negotiations, that if the EU should fail in its support, and if Ukraine were to be forced to surrender, Russia would turn against other countries, including possibly EU Member States; calls on the Council to work with Ukraine to identify a peaceful solution to the war, and to actively engage in implementing Ukraine’s Peace Formula; urges the EU and its Member States, first and foremost, to participate in establishing robust future security guarantees for Ukraine;

9. Believes that the EU can play a crucial role in identifying the gap between Ukraine’s military capabilities and its needs, after three years of war, as well as in identifying the available defence capabilities of the Member States, with a view to coordinating the ramping up of defence industry production as well as ensuring the constant production of certain equipment in order to respond to foreign aggressions or the specific needs of its strategic partners;

10. Calls for a significant increase in the financing of military support to Ukraine; condemns the veto imposed by one Member State on the functioning of the European Peace Facility; calls on the Member States to take the decision, together with their G7 partners, to use frozen assets as a basis for a substantial grant and loan to Ukraine, as a legally robust and financially substantial way to maintain and increase Europe’s response to Ukraine’s military needs;

11. Urges the Council and the Member States to review and strengthen the enforcement of existing sanctions, and to adopt and strictly implement restrictive measures against all entities and countries facilitating the circumvention of sanctions and helping to provide Russia’s military complex with military and dual-use technologies and equipment;

12. Insists on the paramount importance of cooperation with the Ukrainian defence industry and its integration, in the long term, into the EU’s defence technological and industrial base; recalls the urgency to properly finance the Ukraine instrument under the European Defence Industrial Programme (EDIP), which is not currently budgeted for;

13. Strongly believes that the EU must further expand and improve its tailor-made training operations to respond to the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and, in return, create the conditions for European armed forces to learn lessons and strategic practices from them;

14. Calls for the EU and its Members States to facilitate the use of CSDP instruments to complement national security tools in the immediate vicinity of the EU’s territory and territorial waters, and to strengthen dual-use and civilian-military cooperation at EU level, based on a whole-of-government approach; reiterates its call for the protection of critical underwater infrastructure and the development of protective countermeasures;

15. Calls for the EU to develop a comprehensive EU risk assessment to help identify the major cross-sectoral threats and hazards and the concrete risks facing the EU as a whole, building on current sector-specific risk assessment processes;

16. Insists on the importance of using the upcoming Preparedness Union strategy to put the EU on track towards comprehensive preparedness;

17. Calls for a principle of ‘preparedness by design’ to be embedded consistently in a cross-cutting way across the EU institutions, bodies, and agencies; insists on the need to develop a mandatory security and preparedness check for future impact assessments and stress-tests of existing legislation; stresses the need to reduce the obstacles in current EU legislation that undermine the efficiency of European defence and security;

18. Invites the Commission and the Member States to explore the feasibility of an EU preparedness act, setting joint standards and long-term guidelines, to align EU and national efforts wherever possible;

19. Calls for the EU and its Member States to set up and regularly conduct an EU comprehensive preparedness exercise to test both high-level decision-making and operational coordination, in order to encourage the building of strong horizontal links between actors and across sectors;

20. Calls for the EU to urgently adapt its tools to new realities by designing an administrative capacity to fast-track procedures during wars or other large-scale crises, and to adopt the appropriate tools;

21. Considers regular threat analyses, like the one that was first conducted in the Strategic Compass, to be an absolute necessity; considers that the Strategic Compass, the CSDP, the white paper and the European defence industrial strategy should form the basis of a comprehensive vision for European defence;

22. Recalls that the Strategic Compass provides the EU with necessary propositions; urges the Member States to take urgent decisions to ensure its full implementation; reiterates its call for the Military Planning and Conduct Capability to finally benefit from adequate premises and staff, enhanced command and control, and effective communication and information systems for all CSDP missions and operations; insists on the fact that the Rapid Deployment Capacity has to achieve full operational capability in 2025; strongly believes that more substantial progress must be made in bringing Article 42(7) of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) into operation;

23. Reiterates its call to strengthen EU-NATO cooperation with actions and not only words, including in the domains of information exchange, planning coordination, improved cooperation on their respective military operations, and joint efforts to significantly improve on military mobility initiatives, building on lessons learnt from military assistance to Ukraine;

24. Invites the Member States to actively participate in a priority ordering mechanism for defence production to help prioritise orders, contracts and the recruitment of employees in emergency situations; underlines that such a mechanism should apply beyond current defence applications to encompass other essential resilience-building infrastructure such as energy, transport and telecommunications;

25. Calls for the EU, in cooperation with NATO and with the support of the European Defence Agency (EDA), to identify and address the critical defence capability gaps and shortfalls in the EU and focus efforts on European strategic enablers to provide genuine EU added value; notes that in order to address the most extreme military contingencies, the EU must use the same force requirements as those set by NATO for critical military capabilities, particularly for air defence, ammunition, long-range fire capabilities, logistics and enablement;

26. Urges the EU and its Member States to move from a ‘flow’ approach to their military capabilities, which has prevailed during peacetime, to a ‘stock’ approach, with stockpiles of defence equipment ready for a sustained increase in demand; believes that the Commission should take all possible action to increase trust between Member States and encourage greater exchange and transparency on long-term planning, more proactive measures aimed at securing raw materials, and policies to close gaps in production processes and on the labour market;

27. Calls for the EU to adopt a global and coherent approach to external aid in all its aspects, with much closer alignment between the common foreign and security policy and the objectives and instruments of the CSDP;

28. Considers that the CSDP must become the EU’s armed wing in the fight against the hybrid war being waged against it, its Member States and its partners, in particular candidate countries; is deeply worried by the sharp increase in hybrid attacks including sabotage, cyberattacks, information manipulation and interference in elections, with the objective of weakening the EU and candidate countries; calls on the Member States to consider appropriate forms of deterrence and countermeasures, including the use of Article 42(7) TEU; insists on the need to improve the CSDP’s ability to identify, prevent and counter information manipulation aimed at hindering the EU’s external action; reiterates its call to establish an effective horizontal strategic communications strategy adapted to all EU communication channels;

29. Calls for the creation, under the CSDP, of an EU crisis response air fleet comprising military transport aircraft held at EU level and made available to Member States for EU deployments, transport of equipment or troops (military mobility), or emergency evacuation – the need for which was demonstrated by the capability gap during the withdrawal from Afghanistan – as well as for civilian security missions, based on the model of the European Air Transport Command;

30. Expects the European External Action Service to carry out comprehensive and uncompromising reviews of CSDP missions and operations taking into account, in particular, the realism of their respective mandates in relation to the resources allocated, the recruitment method for the staff of missions and operations, particularly with regard to the link between the skills required and the different profiles, the rationalisation of resources and the management of missions and operations, the transparency of calls for tender, activities and results obtained, best practice and lessons learned, and difficulties encountered; asks the Council, on the basis of these reviews, to take the decisions required to adapt or abandon ineffective missions and to strengthen the most useful missions; believes that the evaluation and control of CSDP missions and operations must be improved;

31. Believes that the EU should develop wartime economic cooperation contingency plans with close partners to prepare for mutual support in the case of large-scale security crises involving them directly, and deepen wartime economic dialogues with European and global partners to provide early warning of hard, hybrid, and cyber threats, to foster mutual support planning, protection of critical infrastructure and maritime safety;

32. Calls for the EU and its Member States, in cooperation with NATO, to remove all unnecessary regulatory obstacles that slow down the speed at which Europe is able to develop its military mobility; believes that the EU has to move from the logic of ‘mobility’ to that of ‘military logistics’; considers that the definition of military mobility should apply to infrastructure that covers all logistical aspects of mobility, including but not limited to logistics hubs, fuel, spare parts, repair capacity and ammunition; stresses the need for significant investments in military mobility infrastructure to enhance cargo airlift capabilities, for increased development of logistical infrastructure such as camps, depots, ports, air, sea and rail platforms, railways, waterways, roads and bridges; insists on the need to adapt regulations with the rapid implementation of the technical arrangement signed under the aegis of the EDA Cross Border Movement Permission, the harmonisation of customs formalities and the preparation of a centralised and reasoned lifting of road and rail traffic standards in the event of a crisis situation;

33. Believes that, in order to build a favourable ecosystem for the European defence industry, the EU must provide it with a united and clear long-term vision, giving it visibility and ensuring that priority needs are addressed;

34. Urges the EU to increase the coherence between existing and future EU instruments, in particular between Permanent Structured Cooperation on demand consolidation, and the European Defence Fund (EDF) on programmatic roadmaps, between the European defence industry reinforcement through common procurement act (EDIRPA) on joint procurement, and the Act in support of ammunition production (ASAP) on industrial ramp-up, between the EDIP on identification of dependencies, and the EDF on the resolution of identified dependencies; and within the EDIP itself on the coherence of actions related to the consolidation of demand and supply;

35. Insists on the importance of EU ﬂagship projects, in the form of European Defence Projects of Common Interest (EDPCI), which are critical to the European defence industry; believes that EDPCIs should be used to support the industrial and technological capacities underpinning major priorities shared by several Member States and in fields such as strategic enablers – particularly in space and European air defence – so as to act on the whole spectrum of threats, develop military mobility, in particular strategic and tactical air transport, deep strike capabilities, drone and anti-drone technologies, missiles and munitions, and artificial intelligence, as well as to develop sovereign infrastructure and critical enablers; emphasises that realism must prevail in view of the sheer number of priorities and the need to mobilise new resources; considers, in that regard, that the EU should focus on rapidly available and proven European technologies that reduce its dependencies and improve its security; calls for the creation of European defence industry champions as an objective to consolidate the EU’s defence technological and industrial base (EDTIB) and increase its global competitiveness; considers, furthermore, that instead of focusing on fair returns, EU defence policies should encourage the growth of European centres of excellence;

36. Calls on the further development of the EU defence industrial policy to improve existing defence-speciﬁc instruments and develop new instruments where necessary, and to optimise the use of non-defence-speciﬁc instruments for the purposes of the EDTIB;

37. Recalls the need to ensure the consistency of EU public policies, which must not generate obligations contradictory to the overall defence objectives, especially in a period of security crisis where the concept of ‘strategic exception’ should be introduced; calls for the creation of a genuine defence environment that supports industrial ramp-up efforts by taking better advantage of the Commission’s existing multi-sectoral instruments, screening, reviewing and, where needed, revising them to ensure that they do not undermine EU defence policy objectives;

38. Proposes that relevant defence-related entities/activities be allowed access to InvestEU, and other EU funds taking advantage of the EU defence industry as a job creator; insists on the prioritising of defence-related entities/activities as appropriate with the support of the Chips Act, and the Critical Raw Materials Act; believes that simplification efforts announced by the Commission must fully encompass the defence sector;

39. Insists on the need to ensure geographical coherence by taking stock of the will of the EU and the UK to work together, first and foremost to build security guarantees for Ukraine and to become closer security partners, but also to sign a joint declaration with concrete commitments and structured dialogue to strengthen EU-UK cooperation on the full range of foreign and security challenges the continent faces, the budgetary and regulatory conditions of which remain to be negotiated, and keeping in mind the importance of the EU’s decision-making autonomy;

40. Calls for the coherence of the support offered to companies to be improved by reducing unnecessary administrative burdens and cutting red tape, and ensuring much easier access to support for small and mid-cap companies;

41. Calls for greater coherence in governance, as the CSDP must become the instrument of a powerful Europe; considers that this requires a real link in governance between the Member States, the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and the other European Commissioners; urges the Member States to overcome the complexity of decision-making on European defence; calls for the creation of a Council of defence ministers and the move from unanimity to qualified majority voting for decisions in the European Council, the Council of Ministers and EU agencies such as the EDA, except for those on military operations with an executive mandate; until then, calls for the use of Article 44 TEU and the creation of a cross-sectoral task force on defence in the Commission; calls for increased democratic accountability through enhanced control by Parliament;

42. Stresses that the creation of a single European defence market is a priority as the fragmentation and lack of competitiveness of the European defence industry have so far hampered the capacity of the EU to take more responsibility as a security provider; recalls that the notion of a ‘defence market’ implies a full recognition of its specificity and an appropriate and consistent application of EU public policies; recalls that this single market should aim for European preference by strictly linking it to territoriality and added-value generated in the EU;

43. Strongly believes that European preference should be the cornerstone of EU policies related to the European defence market, as a strategic imperative aimed at protecting European know-how and strengthening European defence capabilities on a long-term basis, and to ensure that EU taxpayer money is used to create added value on EU territory;

44. Calls for the notion of the internal market to be linked to that of territoriality, as defence is driven by Member State policy rather than the market, and as the defence industry is under authorisation to produce and under exemption to sell;

45. Insists on the need to remove barriers to market entry for defence products across the EU by reviewing the directives on the transfer of defence-related products and defence procurement;

46. Underlines that the European preference principle must be reflected in EU defence regulations by clear and unambiguous eligibility criteria both for entities and for products;

47. Calls on the Commission to design a better resourced, more strategic and more efficient successor to the EDF that supports common research and innovation in defence all along the supply chain and lays down the conditions for addressing technological challenges such as advanced persistent threats, artificial intelligence and machine learning, quantum computing, military internet of things, security, supply chain attacks, zero-day exploits and cloud security; calls for the establishment of an EU agency inspired by the American Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), adapted to the EU’s specific characteristics, in order to fund strategic, groundbreaking projects designed to promote European technological and economic superiority;

48. Is concerned that, without a substantial increase in investment in defence, the EU will not reach its objectives on security and defence, either for military support to Ukraine or to bolster the EU’s common security; highlights that the cost of non-preparedness for most extreme military contingencies would then be much higher than the cost of decisive EU preparedness; recalls that aggregate EU defence spending is inadequate and lacks sufficient focus on innovation; calls for the EU and the Member States to work and agree on the concrete ways and means for short- to long-term massive public and private investments in defence and security; recalls that the Commission has estimated the funding needed at EUR 500 billion over the next 10 years (2025-2034), including EUR 400 billion to strengthen Member States’ defence capabilities and EUR 100 billion to support Ukraine;

49. Considers that, in the next EU multiannual financial framework (MFF), defence spending lines will have to reflect the new priority of being ‘ready for the most extreme military contingencies’ and include ambitious financing for military mobility, counter-mobility measures and defence industrial capacity building;

50. Strongly supports the five-point Re-Arm Europe plan proposed by the Commissions President on 4 February 2025, which includes the possibility of triggering the escape clause of the Stability and Growth Pact for defence investments in order to allow Member States to increase their defence spending, a new instrument to provide EUR 150 billion of loans to Member States for defence investment, possibilities and incentives for Member States that choose to use cohesion policy programmes to increase defence spending, as well as the mobilisation of private capital through the completion of the capital markets union and the widening of the scope of the European Investment Bank (EIB); urges the Member States to support this plan;

51. Strongly supports the notion that Member States must increase financing for their defence and security to new levels; notes that some Member States are already increasing their defence spending to 5 % of GDP and insists that the current security environment and multiple, complex and evolving security threats require Member States to spend at least 3 % of GDP on defence;

52. Insists that urgent needs cannot wait for the next MFF; insists that innovative solutions for finding additional funding must be considered without delay, including:

(a) re-prioritising existing EU funds,

(b) investing in the defence sector by making it explicitly eligible under the European Regional Development Fund and the Cohesion Fund, while leaving the regions and Member States free to decide whether to make it a priority according to local needs;

(c) making it easier and faster to re-purpose funds from one project to another,

(d) exploring the possibility of adjusting EU funding criteria to give new prominence to security criteria in allocating spending;

53. Underlines that a ‘popular loan’ would not only mobilise the European families’ savings, but also unify the 450 million European citizens around the need to improve our collective security; stresses that this popular loan should be organised with the same rules and advantages in all the 27 Member States and could give a common sense of belonging to the nations of the EU;

54. Is of the opinion that national recovery and resilience plans should be amended to allow for new defence funding;

55. Recommends the identification of new resources that could require contributions from the Member States as part of a new EU debt programme along the lines of the NextGenerationEU plan, following on from the idea of ‘defence bonds’, to complement the Commission’s Re-Arm Europe plan, if necessary;

56. Reiterates, in line with the Commission’s Re-Arm Europe plan, its call for the EIB, other international financial institutions and private banks in Europe to invest more actively in the European defence industry, as speeding up security and defence investments in the EU would leverage private funding and have a strong signalling effect as regards other investors and market operators;

57. Calls on the EIB in particular to re-evaluate its list of excluded activities, to adjust its lending policy to increase the volume of available funding in the field of security and defence, and to investigate the possibility of issuing earmarked debt for funding security and defence projects;

58. Calls for the development of emergency procedures for projects established in response to major crises or wars whereby the EU, jointly with the EIB, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the Council of Europe Development Bank, can enable banks to use faster processes to support projects necessary in crises or wars; calls for the EU also to consider amending the Treaties to allow the use of capital from the European Stability Mechanism for Europe’s war economy;

59. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the European Council, the Council, the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, the President of the Commission and competent Commissioners, the EU security and defence agencies and the governments and parliaments of the Member States.

MIL OSI Europe News –

March 7, 2025
MIL-OSI Europe: MOTION FOR A RESOLUTION on the white paper on the future of European defence – B10-0144/2025

Source: European Parliament

B10‑0144/2025

European Parliament resolution on the white paper on the future of European defence

(2025/2565(RSP))

The European Parliament,

– having regard to the common security and defence policy (CSDP) and the common foreign and security policy (CFSP) of the EU,

– having regard to the Treaty on European Union, and in particular Article 42 thereof,

– having regard to Title III, Article 3 of the Protocol on the concerns of the Irish people on the Treaty of Lisbon,

– having regard to the announced publication of the white paper on the future of European defence on 19 March 2025,

– having regard to the Helsinki Accords,

– having regard to the various European defence projects of recent years,

– having regard to Rule 136(2) of its Rules of Procedure,

A. whereas, in line with the Treaties, the CSDP is part of the CFSP and is considered a policy framework through which Member States can develop a European strategic culture of security and defence, address conflicts and crises together, protect the Union and its citizens and strengthen international peace and security;

B. whereas Article 42(2) TEU states that the Union’s CSDP must be compatible with the common security and defence policy established within the framework of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), under the North Atlantic Treaty;

C. whereas NATO is largely dominated by the United States, and NATO membership entails a mandatory complementarity and compatibility of European weapons systems with US systems, hence impeding the strategic and operational autonomy of Member States and other European countries;

D. whereas at the NATO Summit in Bucharest in 2008, the US Government pushed for Ukrainian NATO membership against the opinion of several Member States; whereas following the Russian invasion, the United States pushed EU Member States to systematically increase the quantity and quality of arms deliveries to Ukraine;

E. whereas different Member States have different military and security policies, including policies of military neutrality;

F. whereas the United States saw windfall benefits from the Ukraine war through an increase of US shale gas exports to the European Union; whereas the US Government now unjustly wishes to control Ukrainian mineral resources and negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine with Putin, without involving Ukraine and the European Union;

G. whereas unlike nuclear weapon states such as India and the People’s Republic of China, NATO and Russia refuse to commit to a ‘no first use’ policy, whereby they would formally refrain from using nuclear weapons, except in retaliation to an attack by an enemy power using weapons of mass destruction;

H. whereas the US Government has launched a high number of wars and military operations that violated international law and the principles of the Charter of the United Nations; whereas, in light of 2024 advisory opinions of the International Court of Justice, the United States’ ongoing military support for Israel might make it complicit in genocide and illegal occupation; whereas the participation of EU Member States in violations of international law, including in wars of aggression and military invasions contrary to international law against countries such as the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, have undermined global adherence to the principles of international law;

I. whereas the United States has forwardly deployed new B61-12 gravity bombs on the territory of EU Member States, increasing the risk that these Member States will fall victim to preventive or retaliatory strikes related to US foreign policy;

J. whereas Russia’s repeated acts of war and aggression, starting with the war against Georgia in 2008, the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the ongoing illegal war of aggression against Ukraine, as well as an increasing number of acts of sabotage on critical infrastructure, have been factors in creating and exacerbating tensions;

K. whereas Article 41(2) TEU prohibits charging expenditure arising from operations with military or defence implications to the Union budget;

L. whereas the Commission has nevertheless launched several European defence projects over the last few years, including the European Defence Industrial Development Programme (EDIDP), the Preparatory Action on Defence Research (PADR), the European Defence Fund (EDF), the European Defence Industry Reinforcement through common Procurement Act (EDIRPA), the Act in Support of Ammunition Production (ASAP) and, most recently, the European Defence Industrial Strategy (EDIS) and the European Defence Industry Programme (EDIP);

M. whereas according to 2023 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute figures, EU Member States, together with the United Kingdom, already spend more nominally on defence than all other countries in the world combined, with the exception of the United States;

N. whereas in April 2021, the Commission estimated that increased cooperation between Member States in the field of security and defence could save between EUR 25 billion and EUR 100 billion every year;

O. whereas the Commission’s Directorate-General for International Partnerships (DG INTPA) is planning to shut down more than four out of five of its hubs worldwide, reducing its diplomatic presence from around 100 delegations to 18 hubs;

P. whereas in 2024, EU leaders agreed to cut EUR 2 billion from the EU’s external action budget in the multiannual financial framework for 2021-2027; whereas several Member States, such as France and Belgium, have also made cuts and reforms to their diplomacy services;

Q. whereas Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has proposed a new common instrument to boost military spending across the EU to unlock up to EUR 800 billion of additional defence spending over the coming years;

R. whereas even the military spending of the United States, which maintains over 700 military installations in over 70 countries, does not exceed 3.46 % of its GDP;

S. whereas, nevertheless, the US Government, certain Member States and NATO and Commission officials are pushing for a further massive increase in defence expenditure, from an average of 1.9 % of GDP to 5 %;

T. whereas even the military-oriented Niinisto Report, entitled ‘Safer Together –Strengthening Europe’s Civilian and Military Preparedness and Readiness’ highlights the fact that threats to the security of European citizens, including increasingly frequent and intense extreme weather events, such as megadroughts, floods and heatwaves, and the risk of new pandemics, would require massive investment in public services;

U. whereas while the Draghi report on the future of European competitiveness highlights the need for massive investment in a variety of sectors, including energy, pharmaceuticals and transport, the Commission has placed seven Member States under an excessive deficit procedure, pushing for harsh austerity and structural reforms in social and public expenses;

V. whereas a further massive increase in military expenditure will instead lead to cuts in public services, and in social, climate and environmental spending throughout Europe, endangering the social and human security of European citizens;

W. whereas the Commission is nonetheless considering the suspension of economic governance rules for military expenses;

X. whereas the Commission has failed to present a fully autonomous assessment of European defence needs and priorities, relying instead on NATO assessments of critical gaps in defence capability;

Y. whereas Türkiye, a NATO member, illegally occupies 37 % of Cyprus, an EU Member State;

Z. whereas in international relations theory the ‘security dilemma’ refers to a phenomenon whereby actions, such as arms procurement, taken by a state actor to increase its own security provokes reactions from other states, such as increased arms procurement or preventive attacks, that ultimately lead to a decrease rather than an increase in the original state’s security;

AA. whereas the 1975 Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, concluded in Helsinki between the United States, Canada, the Soviet Union and all of the countries of Europe, except Albania, played an important role in easing tensions between East and West during the Cold War;

AB. whereas the Cold War collective security acquis has been systematically undermined by the United States’ withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM), the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) and the Open Skies Treaty, systematically followed by Russian withdrawals, and by the Russian withdrawal from the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe and from the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty;

AC. whereas a new European security architecture will have to apply the principles of peaceful coexistence between countries with different political systems and offer security guarantees to all parties in order to avoid Europe being divided once again into two diametrically opposed blocs;

Towards a European collective security architecture

1. Recalls that the Treaties consider the CSDP part of the CFSP; asks, therefore, that any defence initiative at EU level be subordinated to a clear foreign and security policy and strategy for peace on the European continent;

2. Rejects the militarisation of the EU and any belligerent objectives of the CSDP;

3. Notes with great concern the diminishing respect for international and humanitarian law by parties all around the world, with Israel, Russia and the United States being flagrant examples; reiterates the need for European independence in shaping foreign and defence policy;

4. Considers that in light of the United States’ past and ongoing violations of international law and the negative impact of US military interventions on neighbouring regions, the foreign, security and defence policy of the Union and Member States can no longer be aligned with the framework of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO); calls, therefore, on the European Council to start the process of revising the EU Treaties to remove this requirement from the TEU;

5. Recalls that NATO and the EU are distinct organisations which serve very different purposes and whose membership is not even identical; regrets the conflation of NATO, a military alliance, with the EU;

6. Is extremely worried by the fact that there are still more than 13 000 nuclear weapons scattered around the world, many of which can be deployed within minutes and could cause the end of humankind; notes with concern that despite a stated commitment to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, NATO’s nuclear member states invested USD 271 billion in nuclear weapons modernisation and maintenance between 2019 and 2023, while in 2023 China and Russia were the second and third largest spenders, with budgets of USD 11.9 billion and USD 8.3 billion respectively;

7. Believes that NATO’s refusal to commit to a ‘no first use’ policy on nuclear weapons and the forward deployment of US nuclear weapons in Europe increases the risk of Europe becoming a target of nuclear strikes; demands, therefore, the withdrawal of US nuclear weapons from the territory of Member States; is deeply concerned about nuclear threats to European security, including veiled warnings about the use of tactical nuclear weapons and Russia’s lowering of its threshold for using nuclear weapons;

8. Urges the Member States to work on a new long-term collective security architecture for Europe inspired by the principles of the Helsinki process and including the concept of mutual security guarantees; notes that a fundamental aspect of such an approach is respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all nations and a commitment to international law;

9. Insists that a new European security architecture apply the principles of peaceful coexistence between countries with different political systems, and offer security guarantees to all parties;

10. Calls on the Commission, in light of multiple threats ranging from climate-related catastrophes to pandemics, to abandon a narrow focus on military security and develop a policy centred on human security as defined in United Nations General Assembly resolution 66/290, which states that ‘human security is an approach to assist Member States in identifying and addressing widespread and cross-cutting challenges to the survival, livelihood and dignity of their people’ and calls for ‘people-centred, comprehensive, context-specific and prevention-oriented responses that strengthen the protection and empowerment of all people’;

11. Calls on the Commission and Member States to seek inspiration from Austria, which has enshrined neutrality in its constitution, committing not to join military alliances and not to permit the establishment of any foreign military bases on its territory;

12. Calls on the Commission and Member States to also look to the example set by Ireland, with its tradition of military neutrality; recalls that this tradition includes an active approach towards peace support operations and crisis management, contributions to conflict resolution and peacebuilding, work for human rights and development, and efforts to promote disarmament and the elimination of weapons of mass destruction;

13. Regrets the attacks on Irish neutrality and recalls that the people of Ireland were guaranteed continued military neutrality, underpinned by a commitment to only undertake operations with a United Nations mandate, ahead of their ratification of the Lisbon Treaty;

14. Reiterates its call on Türkiye, a NATO member, to withdraw its troops from Cyprus, an EU Member State, and to work constructively towards finding a viable and peaceful solution based on the relevant UN resolutions;

15. Calls for unanimity voting on defence issues to be maintained within the Council to promote consensus-based solutions that foster much-needed unity;

Diplomacy as the cornerstone of European security

16. Believes that diplomacy should remain a cornerstone of EU foreign policy;

17. Recalls that conflict prevention is paramount to any security and defence strategy; underlines the fact that diplomacy prevents and ends wars, and that every euro invested in conflict prevention saves around EUR 16 later on;

18. Believes that, given the deteriorating security situation on several fronts and increasing geopolitical tensions, preventive diplomacy requires sustained and enhanced attention; calls, therefore, on the Commission and Member States to immediately reverse the cutbacks made to diplomatic representations;

19. Believes that its systematic alignment with US foreign policy, most recently with regard to Israeli war crimes, ethnic cleansing and genocidal practices against Palestinians, has dramatically reduced the EU’s global diplomatic credibility and therefore worsened its security situation;

20. Recalls that the participation of EU Member States in illegal military operations and the support for violations of international law abroad gravely endangers the security of EU citizens; urges the Commission and Member States to explore a non-aligned foreign and security policy stance based on the principles of the UN Charter, including peaceful conflict resolution, diplomacy and multilateralism;

21. Believes that Europe has much to gain from diversifying its relations and maintaining diplomatic connections with as many countries as possible around the world;

Arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation

22. Is deeply concerned that world military expenditure continues to rise to new record levels; highlights the fact that an arms race will not create security for European citizens, but instead, in line with the security dilemma, heighten the risk of violent conflict; calls on the Commission to actively promote new arms control treaties;

23. Recalls that the EU strategy against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction made non-proliferation a central goal of the EU’s CFSP, stating that ‘our objective is to prevent, deter, halt and, where possible, eliminate proliferation of concern worldwide’; calls, therefore, on Member States to sign and ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons;

24. Notes that arms exports, also of small and light weapons, can fuel conflict and global terrorism and destabilise entire regions, states and societies, thereby thwarting sustainable development and crisis management efforts; calls on the Commission and Member States to strictly apply Council Common Position 2008/944/CFSP of 8 December 2008 defining common rules governing control of exports of military technology and equipment in order to avoid a worsening of the security situation in the EU’s immediate neighbourhood;

25. Calls for the creation of a Directorate-General for Disarmament and Arms Control at the Commission;

26. Demands an immediate arms embargo against Israel and any other country directly or indirectly involved in armed conflict, except in the case of those that are the victim of invasion by others, in order to stop EU complicity in war crimes, ethnic cleansing and genocidal practices, whether perpetrated by Israel or any other country; calls on the Commission and Member States to base their foreign and security policy on the principles of the Charter of the United Nations and international law;

Defence expenditure

27. Urges the Commission and Member States to offer full transparency and a critical audit of the current defence expenditure within the Union, detailing why it estimates that European countries would be unable to defend themselves with budgets already vastly superior to those of most of the world’s countries;

28. Notes with concern that the Commission has presented a new EUR 150 billion common defence fund; believes that an increase in defence spending is not the solution to finding a lasting peace and that cuts in the EU structural funds should not be used for this purpose, given how vital these funds are to the development of local communities across the EU;

29. Notes that the share of GDP is not an adequate measure for the efficiency and impact of defence expenditure; calls on the Commission and Member States not to enter an arms race through a massive increase in defence budgets at the expense of both human and social security;

30. Regards the NATO demand for complementarity and compatibility of European weapons systems with US systems as incompatible with European strategic autonomy; regrets that the Commission and the Council have failed to present a detailed assessment of European critical defence capability gaps; calls on both institutions to present such an assessment, including specific priorities, before considering increased defence expenditure; recalls that these should focus on defensive tasks, not on building capacities for military intervention all over the world;

31. Recalls Commission estimates that increased cooperation between Member States in the field of security and defence could save up to EUR 100 billion every year; calls, in this regard, for inspiration to be drawn from existing intra-European cooperation structures, such as BACA, the Belgian-Dutch Naval cooperation BeNeSam and the Nordic Defence Cooperation, including Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, which have increased the efficiency of the participating nations’ national defence, and to explore common synergies and facilitate efficient common solutions;

32. Considers that the military cooperation commitments that may be assumed in collective security organisations should be considered in light of strict respect for the UN Charter;

33. Rejects the allocation of appropriations on the EU budget to the EU’s militarisation; calls for the reallocation of EU budget funds earmarked for the ongoing militarisation of the EU and its programmes to respond to the social and economic needs of citizens and promote cohesion between Member States;

34. Highlights the fact that there can be neither autonomy nor security without digital sovereignty; calls on the Commission to prioritise the development of a democratic, public-led digital stack that includes digital infrastructure as a service, and universal platforms, such as search engines and foundation AI models, governed by new public institutions with public and civil society representation;

35. Calls for heightened cooperation between Member States on sectoral issues of critical infrastructure protection, such as submarine cables;

Defence industry

36. Recalls that over the past three years, the EU has adopted a number of new initiatives on defence, and that the new Commissioner for Defence and Space believes that an additional investment of EUR 500 billion is needed in the coming decade, though other sources speak of EUR 700 billion;

37. Recalls that the previous EU programmes have been implemented with a lack of transparency with regard to the application of EU ethical guidelines, and that decision-making is extremely opaque and heavily influenced by arms industry lobbyists;

38. States that without ethics in investment choices, the EU will contribute to the creation of a more dangerous and lawless world order, where imperialist powers can disregard international law without facing consequences, while countries of the global south are exploited for their resources;

39. Calls, in addition, for the EU to adopt a policy of transparent, mission-oriented military spending, with more conscious spending at the service of a defined foreign policy to ensure greater efficiency;

40. Recalls that under Article 41(2) TEU expenditure arising from operations having military or defence implications may not be charged to the EU budget; calls for a strict application of this article; demands a retroactive review of corresponding defence funds and budget lines and for their termination where needed;

41. Expresses deep concern about the increased subsidies and public support for the military-industrial complex amid record total global military expenditure of USD 2 443 billion in 2023, making 2023 the ninth consecutive year in which military expenditure increased;

42. Demands that European public money go to European companies and emphasises that public European companies should, by definition, remain in Europe, while private companies can relocate their activities if they so wish;

43. Observes that leading arms companies have benefited shamelessly from the war in Ukraine; notes that Lockheed Martin alone distributed USD 6.8 billion of cash to shareholders in dividends and share repurchases in 2024; demands that windfall profits be taxed to finance climate adaptation, public health and housing, which are also components of a broader understanding of security;

44. Considers that the use of public money should systematically correspond to a proportional public return on investment and not finance corporate profit;

45. Stresses that focusing our resources, notably research and development spending, on the military sector will also slow down the development of other strategic industries with civilian purposes, such as renewable energy or pharmaceuticals;

46. Adds that military spending does not address any of the major social or environmental challenges, and that, worse still, it reinforces polluting and energy-consuming industrial models, thus increasing pressure on resources and the climate, particularly critical materials;

47. Believes that a massive increase in purchases of US-made goods would not only be detrimental to the European economy but would equally prolong Europe’s military dependence on the United States, while creating new industrial and technological constraints;

48. Demands that the defence industry continue to be excluded from qualifying for the sustainability criteria with regard to investment;

49. Calls for EIB financing to be strictly limited to civilian projects, excluding dual-use items;

Reprioritising public services and social spending

50. Is deeply concerned that militarisation, and specifically the ReArm Europe plan, is being used to further attack public services across the EU, which are already facing the suffocating effects of austerity measures imposed by the Commission;

51. Is appalled by the fact that the Commission is willing to bend fiscal rules such as the Stability and Growth Pact to finance military spending, but considers it impossible to raise spending to fund crumbling public services and support social and economic upward convergence in Member States;

52. Firmly insists that health, education, green mobility, climate adaptation, climate mitigation, biodiversity, food security and digital transition are elements of human security and should be considered priorities that require investments rather than budgetary cuts;

53. Calls, in line with the concept of human security, for a reprioritisation of public services and social welfare spending, as well as for investments in fighting climate change, as imperative prerequisites for guaranteeing that people live in a safe and secure environment;

°

° °

54. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and the European External Action Service.

MIL OSI Europe News –

March 7, 2025
MIL-OSI Europe: European Commission and EIB group lay foundations for a new pan-European investment platform for affordable and sustainable housing
Source: European Investment Bank
- Commissioner for Energy and Housing Dan Jørgensen joins EIB Group President Nadia Calviño to start laying the foundations of a pan-European investment platform for affordable and sustainable housing. This initiative underlines the importance of ensuring more affordable and sustainable housing in a productive economy.
- At EIB Forum, EIB Group announced upcoming launch of the EIB Action Plan to support housing, which includes a new housing one-stop-shop portal to provide advice and finance to support innovation in the construction sector, build affordable homes and invest in energy efficiency and the renovation of housing stock across Europe. EIB plans investments of around €10 billion over next two years.
- EIB Action Plan and one-stop shop portal are key building blocks of the pan-European investment platform that the European Commission and the EIB are working on and that are open to other players such as national promotional banks and international financial institutions.
The European Commission and the European Investment Bank (EIB) Group are partnering with Europe’s national promotional banks (NPBs) and international financial institutions (IFIs) to develop new financing opportunities for affordable and sustainable housing across Europe. At the EIB Group Forum in Luxembourg today, EIB Group President Nadia Calviño and European Commissioner for Energy and Housing Dan Jørgensen underlined the importance of tackling one of the most pressing concerns of citizens and governments in the European Union. They advocated a pan-European push that brings together local and national, public and private actors to catalyse finance and urgent action under the Commission’s upcoming European Affordable Housing Plan.

Their call comes as the EIB Group completes work on an Action Plan for Affordable and Sustainable Housing with planned investments of around €10 billion over the next two years. The EIB Plan will support local and national efforts to build more affordable homes, renovate existing housing stock to be more energy efficient and encourage more sustainable and innovative building materials and equipment. The EIB also launched a housing portal, a one-stop shop to support final beneficiaries to access advice and finance. The EIB Group’s investment aims to deliver 1.5 million new or renovated housing units across Europe. The EIB Action Plan and the portal are key building blocks for the pan-European investment platform, which will be open to other players such as NPBs and IFIs. The Council of European Development Bank has also signalled its interest in participating.

Speaking at a special event on housing at the EIB Group’s annual Forum titled “Investing in a more Sustainable and Secure Europe”, President Nadia Calviño said: “Being able to afford a comfortable and warm home is a wish that unites every family and every community in Europe. Helping to make that possible for our citizens is a social responsibility and a fiscal challenge. It is also the foundation of any productive economy. That’s why we at the EIB Group and the European Commission are working full speed on a pan-European initiative that will be open for others to join.”

In his opening remarks at the EIB Group Forum, Commissioner for Energy and Housing Dan Jørgensen said: “Ensuring more affordable and sustainable housing is a pressing issue. The Commission will enable Member States to increase cohesion funds for affordable housing and ensure our state-aid rules better support our goal of achieving more affordable housing. The EU is already mobilising substantial funding, for example via the Recovery and Resilience Facility But we will not stop there. Today we are kicking off the work with the EIB, national promotional banks and international financial institutions towards a pan-European investment platform to attract more public and private funding for housing. And, together with the European Parliament, we will consult intensively with Member States, cities, regions and all stakeholders to deliver the European Affordable Housing Plan.”

The lack of affordable housing in Europe, particularly in larger cities, is highlighted as an increasing concern in relation to Europe’s economic growth and productivity in the EIB Group’s investment survey based on feedback from around 13,000 European small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The report, presented this week at the Forum, also notes low productivity and insufficient innovation in the European construction sector, adding to the cost and time of delivering housing projects. At the same time, the cost of energy and the impact of carbon-dioxide emissions are also a concern. Two-thirds of household energy consumption are used for heating homes and, with 46 million Europeans living in energy poverty, the energy efficiency of Europe’s housing stock is a key focus.

Working closely with the Commission and its new Task Force for Housing in the context of the European Affordable Housing Plan, as well as Member States, regions, cities and NPBs and IFIs, the EIB Group aims to raise the supply of affordable and sustainable housing in the EU. The approach rests on four pillars, which provide the general framework for the measures described further below:
- Partnerships with the European Commission and NPBIs/IFIs for easier access to finance and advice, based on complementarity with existing structures and products.
- EU-wide rollout: widening the regional scope of EIB Group support with an emphasis on EU countries with less mature housing systems and large unmet needs, where an enhanced advisory component will complement financing.
- Value-chain approach: opening up to new types of housing projects – from innovation in construction to real-estate development to ownership, with policy safeguards.
- Mobilisation of private sector: expansion of the client base to include private, for-profit promoters
In July 2024, the EIB Group’s newly established Housing Task Force organised a kick-off event featuring around 300 public and private stakeholders to discuss scaling up financial support for affordable and sustainable housing throughout the EU. The event was followed by technical meetings in the autumn with stakeholders to help shape a pan-European investment platform alongside the Commission.

Background information

The European Commission is already active on housing, with support through the Recovery and Resilience Facility, Cohesion Policy Funds, InvestEU, LIFE and Horizon Europe, among others.

As outlined in the mission letter of Commissioner Jørgensen, the Commission will publish its first-ever European Affordable Housing Plan. The plan will offer technical assistance to cities and Member States and focus on investment and skills needed. The Commission will in particular develop a European Strategy for Housing Construction to support housing supply, establish a pan-European investment platform for affordable and sustainable housing, conduct an analysis of the impact of housing speculation, support Member States to double the planned cohesion policy investments in affordable housing, tackle systemic issues with short-term accommodation rentals and make proposals to tackle the inefficient use of the current housing stock and revise state-aid rules to enable housing support measures, notably for energy efficiency and social housing.

Background information

The European Investment Bank (ElB) is the long-term lending institution of the European Union, owned by its Member States. Built around eight core priorities, we finance investments that contribute to EU policy objectives by bolstering climate action and the environment, digitalisation and technological innovation, security and defence, cohesion, agriculture and bioeconomy, social infrastructure, the capital markets union, and a stronger Europe in a more peaceful and prosperous world. 

The EIB Group, which also includes the European Investment Fund (EIF), signed nearly €89 billion in new financing for over 900 high -impact projects in 2024, boosting Europe’s competitiveness and security.   

All projects financed by the EIB Group are in line with the Paris Climate Agreement, as pledged in our Climate Bank Roadmap. Almost 60% of the EIB Group’s annual financing supports projects directly contributing to climate change mitigation, adaptation, and a healthier environment.   

Fostering market integration and mobilising investment, the Group supported a record of over €100 billion in new investment for Europe’s energy security in 2024 and mobilised €110 billion in growth capital for startups, scale-ups and European pioneers. Approximately half of the EIB’s financing within the European Union is directed towards cohesion regions, where per capita income is lower than the EU average. 

High-quality, up-to-date photos of our headquarters for media use are available here.
MIL OSI Europe News –
March 7, 2025
MIL-OSI Europe: Written question – IMEC’s strategic importance and development challenges – E-000876/2025
Source: European Parliament
Question for written answer E-000876/2025
to the Commission
Rule 144
Afroditi Latinopoulou (PfE)

The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) is a critical initiative to strengthen geo-economic connectivity between Asia, the Middle East and Europe, with the aim of diversifying trade routes and reducing the EU’s dependence on China and the Suez Canal.

The agreement to implement the corridor was signed at the G20 in 2023, with the participation of the EU and the US. The IMEC acts as a Western counterweight to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which creates problems for European countries hosting Chinese strategic investments. The European Union must address the critical issues of political stability and financing for part of the project in order to ensure its sustainability.

In view of the above:

1.What measures has the Commission put in place to accelerate the implementation of the IMEC and the necessary port/railway infrastructure?

2.How does the Commission plan to protect the corridor from external crises, such as the blockade of the Red Sea by the Houthis?

3.Given the potential of the BRI in Europe and the strategic importance of the IMEC, how will the Commission ensure that the corridor does not become economically dependent on third powers, such as Türkiye or Iran, thereby strengthening the interests of European states?

Submitted: 27.2.2025
Last updated: 6 March 2025
MIL OSI Europe News –
March 7, 2025
MIL-OSI Europe: Latest news – Next meeting of the FEMM Committee: IWD event on 6 March – Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality
Source: European Parliament
The next meeting of the Committee on Gender Equality and Women’s Rights will take place on:

6 March 2025 from 9.00 – 12.30 in room ANTALL 6Q2 International Women’s Day 2025 event
FEMM Committee meetings calendars
     2024
     2025
     FEMM Bureau and Coordinators
FEMM work in progress
     FEMM work in progress (updated 18/02/2025)

Source : © European Union, 2025 – EP
MIL OSI Europe News –
March 7, 2025
MIL-OSI Europe: Written question – Proposals by former Commissioner for Economy Paolo Gentiloni on a debt-financed EU Defence Fund and ending the veto on new Eurobonds – E-000874/2025
Source: European Parliament
Question for written answer E-000874/2025
to the Commission
Rule 144
Petra Steger (PfE)

Former Commissioner for Economy Paolo Gentiloni has publicly called for the creation of a debt-financed EU Defence Fund. This would constitute a second step after Commission President von der Leyen already announced that Member States would be allowed greater flexibility in debt reduction to increase military spending. Consequently, according to Gentiloni, the existing veto against new Eurobonds should also be reconsidered. However, this mutualisation of debt rewards poorly performing countries at the expense of the few remaining net contributor countries. This creates a completely wrong incentive for the future – ‘bad economic management pays and is rewarded’. Making this madness permanent would mean the economic deathblow for the net contributor states and would be nothing other than a centralist wealth redistribution programme that would undermine national sovereignty and make the debt and transfer union a reality once and for all.

1.What is the Commission’s assessment of Gentiloni’s proposals, in particular with regard to a debt-financed EU Defence Fund and an end to the veto on new Eurobonds?

2.Can the Commission exclude the use of new debt-financed financial instruments, such as a new debt fund, during the current legislative term?

3.What measures does the Commission intend to take to safeguard the national budgetary autonomy of the Member States and to prevent net contributors, such as Austria, from having to pay for the mistakes of states with irresponsible budgetary policies?

Submitted: 27.2.2025
Last updated: 6 March 2025
MIL OSI Europe News –
March 7, 2025
MIL-OSI Europe: Latest news – DMED meeting, 24 March 2025, 16.00-17.30 – Delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union for the Mediterranean

Source: European Parliament

A meeting of the EP’s Delegation (DMED) to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union for the Mediterranean (PA-UfM) will take place on Monday, 24 March, 2025 from 16.00 to 17.30 in Brussels.

Source : © European Union, 2025 – EP

MIL OSI Europe News –

March 7, 2025

MIL-OSI: Nokia Corporation: Repurchase of own shares on 06.03.2025

Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

Nokia Corporation
Stock Exchange Release
6 March 2025 at 22:30 EET

Nokia Corporation: Repurchase of own shares on 06.03.2025

Espoo, Finland – On 6 March 2025 Nokia Corporation (LEI: 549300A0JPRWG1KI7U06) has acquired its own shares (ISIN FI0009000681) as follows:

Trading venue (MIC Code)	Number of shares	Weighted average price / share, EUR*
XHEL	2,755,402	4.84
CEUX	826,754	4.84
BATE	–	–
AQEU	142,080	4.84
TQEX	129,929	4.83
Total	3,854,165	4.84

* Rounded to two decimals

On 22 November 2024, Nokia announced that its Board of Directors is initiating a share buyback program to offset the dilutive effect of new Nokia shares issued to the shareholders of Infinera Corporation and certain Infinera Corporation share-based incentives. The repurchases in compliance with the Market Abuse Regulation (EU) 596/2014 (MAR), the Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2016/1052 and under the authorization granted by Nokia’s Annual General Meeting on 3 April 2024 started on 25 November 2024 and end by 31 December 2025 and target to repurchase 150 million shares for a maximum aggregate purchase price of EUR 900 million.

Total cost of transactions executed on 6 March 2025 was EUR 18,653,002. After the disclosed transactions, Nokia Corporation holds 149,315,265 treasury shares.

Details of transactions are included as an appendix to this announcement.

On behalf of Nokia Corporation

BofA Securities Europe SA

About Nokia
At Nokia, we create technology that helps the world act together.

As a B2B technology innovation leader, we are pioneering networks that sense, think and act by leveraging our work across mobile, fixed and cloud networks. In addition, we create value with intellectual property and long-term research, led by the award-winning Nokia Bell Labs which is celebrating 100 years of innovation.

With truly open architectures that seamlessly integrate into any ecosystem, our high-performance networks create new opportunities for monetization and scale. Service providers, enterprises and partners worldwide trust Nokia to deliver secure, reliable and sustainable networks today – and work with us to create the digital services and applications of the future.

Inquiries:

Nokia Communications
Phone: +358 10 448 4900
Email: press.services@nokia.com
Maria Vaismaa, Global Head of External Communications

Nokia Investor Relations
Phone: +358 931 580 507
Email: investor.relations@nokia.com

Attachment

Daily Report 2025-03-06

The MIL Network –

March 7, 2025

MIL-OSI Asia-Pac: India’s AI Revolution
Source: Government of India (2)

India’s AI Revolution

A Roadmap to Viksit Bharat

Posted On: 06 MAR 2025 4:09PM by PIB Delhi

Introduction

India is undergoing a remarkable transformation in Artificial Intelligence, driven by the visionary leadership of PM Modi. For the first time in India’s history, the government is actively shaping an AI ecosystem where computing power, GPUs, and research opportunities are accessible at an affordable cost.

Unlike in the past, AI in India is no longer confined to a privileged few or dominated by global tech giants. Through forward-looking policies, the Modi government is empowering students, startups, and innovators with world-class AI infrastructure, fostering a truly level playing field. Initiatives such as the IndiaAI Mission and the establishment of Centres of Excellence for AI are strengthening the country’s AI ecosystem, paving the way for innovation and self-reliance in this critical sector.

These efforts align with the vision of Viksit Bharat by 2047, where India aspires to become a global AI powerhouse, leveraging cutting-edge technology for economic growth, governance, and societal progress.

AI Compute and Semiconductor Infrastructure

India is rapidly building a strong AI computing and semiconductor infrastructure to support its growing digital economy. With the approval of the IndiaAI Mission in 2024, the government allocated ₹10,300 crore over five years to strengthen AI capabilities. A key focus of this mission is the development of a high-end common computing facility equipped with 18,693 Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), making it one of the most extensive AI compute infrastructures globally. This capacity is nearly nine times that of the open-source AI model DeepSeek and about two-thirds of what ChatGPT operates on.

Here are the key developments:
- Scaling AI Compute Infrastructure: The initial phase of the mission has already made 10,000 GPUs available, with the remaining units to be added soon. This will enable the creation of indigenous AI solutions tailored to Indian languages and contexts.
- Opening Access to High-Performance Computing: India has also pioneered the launch of an open GPU marketplace, making high-performance computing accessible to startups, researchers, and students. Unlike many countries where AI infrastructure is controlled by large corporations, this initiative ensures that small players have an opportunity to innovate.
- Robust GPU Supply Chain: The government has selected 10 companies to supply the GPUs, ensuring a robust and diversified supply chain.
- Indigenous GPU Capabilities: To further strengthen domestic capabilities, India aims to develop its own GPU within the next three to five years, reducing reliance on imported technology.
- Affordable Compute Access: A new common compute facility will soon be launched, allowing researchers and startups to access GPU power at a highly subsidised rate of ₹100 per hour, compared to the global cost of $2.5 to $3 per hour.
- Strengthening Semiconductor Manufacturing: In parallel, India is advancing semiconductor manufacturing, with five semiconductor plants under construction. These developments will not only support AI innovation but also reinforce India’s position in the global electronics sector.
Advancing AI with Open Data and Centres of Excellence (CoE)

Recognising the importance of data in AI development, the Modi government has launched the IndiaAI Dataset Platform to provide seamless access to high-quality, non-personal datasets. This platform will house the largest collection of anonymised data, empowering Indian startups and researchers to develop advanced AI applications. By ensuring diverse and abundant datasets, this initiative will drive AI-driven solutions across key sectors, enhancing innovation and accuracy.
- IndiaAI Dataset Platform for Open Data Access: The platform will enable Indian startups and researchers to access a unified repository of high-quality, anonymised datasets, reducing barriers to AI innovation.
- Boosting AI Model Accuracy with Diverse Data: By providing large-scale, non-personal datasets, the initiative will help reduce biases and improve the reliability of AI applications across domains such as agriculture, weather forecasting, and traffic management.
- Centres of Excellence: The government has established three AI Centres of Excellence (CoE) in Healthcare, Agriculture, and Sustainable Cities in New Delhi. The Budget 2025 further announced a new CoE for AI in education with an outlay of ₹500 crore, making it the fourth such centre.
- Skilling for AI-Driven Industries: Plans are in place for five National Centres of Excellence for Skilling, which will equip youth with industry-relevant expertise. These centres will be set up in collaboration with global partners to support the ‘Make for India, Make for the World’ vision in manufacturing and AI innovation.
India’s AI Models & Language Technologies

The government is facilitating the development of India’s own foundational models, including Large Language Models (LLMs) and problem-specific AI solutions tailored to Indian needs. To foster AI research, multiple Centres of Excellence have also been set up.
- India’s Foundational Large Language Models: IndiaAI has launched an initiative to develop indigenous foundational AI models, including LLMs and Small Language Models (SLMs), through a call for proposals.
- Digital India BHASHINI: An AI-led language translation platform designed to enable easy access to the internet and digital services in Indian languages, including voice-based access, and support content creation in Indian languages.
- BharatGen: The world’s first government-funded multimodal LLM initiative, BharatGen was launched in 2024 in Delhi. It aims to enhance public service delivery and citizen engagement through foundational models in language, speech, and computer vision. BharatGen involves a consortium of AI researchers from premier academic institutions in India.
- Sarvam-1 AI Model: A large language model optimised for Indian languages, Sarvam-1 has 2 billion parameters and supports ten major Indian languages. It is designed for applications such as language translation, text summarisation, and content generation.
- Chitralekha: An open-source video transcreation platform developed by AI4Bhārat, Chitralekha enables users to generate and edit audio transcripts in various Indic languages.
- Hanooman’s Everest 1.0: A multilingual AI system developed by SML, Everest 1.0 supports 35 Indian languages, with plans to expand to 90.
AI Integration with Digital Public Infrastructure

India’s Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) has redefined digital innovation by combining public funding with private sector-led innovation. Platforms like Aadhaar, UPI, and DigiLocker serve as the foundation, while private entities build application-specific solutions on top of them. This model is now being enhanced with AI, integrating intelligent solutions into financial and governance platforms. The global appeal of India’s DPI was evident at the G20 Summit, where several countries expressed interest in adopting similar frameworks. Japan’s patent grant to India’s UPI payment system further underscores its scalability.

For Mahakumbh 2025, AI-driven DPI solutions played a crucial role in managing the world’s largest human gathering. AI-powered tools monitored real-time railway passenger movement to optimise crowd dispersal in Prayagraj. The Bhashini-powered Kumbh Sah’AI’yak Chatbot enabled voice-based lost-and-found services, real-time translation, and multilingual assistance. Its integration with Indian Railways and UP Police streamlined communication, ensuring swift issue resolution. By leveraging AI with DPI, Mahakumbh 2025 set a global benchmark for tech-enabled, inclusive, and efficient event management.

AI Talent & Workforce Development

India’s workforce is at the heart of its digital revolution. The country is adding one Global Capability Center (GCC) every week, reinforcing its status as a preferred destination for global R&D and technological development. However, sustaining this growth will require continuous investment in education and skill development. The government is addressing this challenge by revamping university curricula to include AI, 5G, and semiconductor design, aligning with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. This ensures that graduates acquire job-ready skills, reducing the transition time between education and employment.
- AI Talent Pipeline & AI Education: Under the IndiaAI Future Skills initiative, AI education is being expanded across undergraduate, postgraduate, and Ph.D. programs. Fellowships are being provided to full-time Ph.D. scholars researching AI in the top 50 NIRF-ranked institutes. To enhance accessibility, Data and AI Labs are being established in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, with a model IndiaAI Data Lab already set up at NIELIT Delhi.
- India Ranks 1st in Global AI Skill Penetration: According to the Stanford AI Index 2024, India ranks first globally in AI skill penetration with a score of 2.8, ahead of the US (2.2) and Germany (1.9). AI talent concentration in India has grown by 263% since 2016, positioning the country as a major AI hub. India also leads in AI Skill Penetration for Women, with a score of 1.7, surpassing the US (1.2) and Israel (0.9).
- AI Innovation: India has emerged as the fastest-growing developer population globally and ranks second in public generative AI projects on GitHub. The country is home to 16% of the world’s AI talent, showcasing its growing influence in AI innovation and adoption.
- AI Talent Hubs: The India Skills Report 2024 by Wheebox forecasts that India’s AI industry will reach USD 28.8 billion by 2025, with a CAGR of 45%. The AI-skilled workforce has seen a 14-fold increase from 2016 to 2023, making India one of the top five fastest-growing AI talent hubs, alongside Singapore, Finland, Ireland, and Canada. The demand for AI professionals in India is projected to reach 1 million by 2026.
AI Adoption & Industry Growth

India’s Generative AI (GenAI) ecosystem has seen remarkable growth, even amid a global downturn. The country’s AI landscape is evolving from experimental use cases to scalable, production-ready solutions, reflecting its growing maturity.
- Businesses Prioritising AI Investments: According to BCG, 80% of Indian companies consider AI a core strategic priority, surpassing the global average of 75%. Additionally, 69% plan to increase their tech investments in 2025, with one-third allocating over USD 25 million to AI initiatives.
- GenAI Startup Funding: According to a November 2024 report by National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM), Indian GenAI startup funding surged over six times quarter-on-quarter, reaching USD 51 million in Q2FY2025, driven by B2B and agentic AI startups.
- AI Transforming Workplaces: The Randstad AI & Equity Report 2024 states that seven in 10 Indian employees used AI at work in 2024, up from five in 10 a year earlier, showcasing AI’s rapid integration into workplaces.
- AI Empowering Small & Medium Businesses (SMBs): AI-driven technologies, such as autonomous agents, are helping SMBs scale efficiently, personalise customer experiences, and optimise operations. According to Salesforce, 78% of Indian SMBs using AI reported revenue growth, while 93% stated AI has contributed to increased revenues.
- Rapid Expansion of India’s AI Economy: As per the BCG-NASSCOM Report 2024, India’s AI market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 25-35%, reinforcing its potential for innovation and job creation. While AI automates routine tasks, it is simultaneously generating new opportunities in data science, machine learning, and AI-driven applications.
- AI Startup Support Ecosystem: India hosts 520+ tech incubators and accelerators, ranking third globally in active programs. 42% of these were established in the past five years, catering to the evolving needs of Indian startups. AI-focused accelerators like T-Hub MATH provide crucial mentorship in product development, business strategy, and scaling. In early 2024, MATH supported over 60 startups, with five actively discussing funding, highlighting India’s growing AI startup landscape.
A Pragmatic AI Regulation Approach

India’s pragmatic AI regulation balances innovation and accountability, steering clear of overregulation that could stifle growth and unchecked market-driven governance that may create monopolies. Instead of relying solely on legislation, India is investing in AI-driven safeguards, funding top universities and IITs to develop solutions for deep fakes, privacy risks, and cybersecurity threats. This techno-legal approach ensures AI remains a force for inclusive growth, fostering an ecosystem where innovation thrives while ethical concerns are proactively addressed.

Conclusion

India’s rapid advancements in artificial intelligence, underpinned by strategic government initiatives, have positioned the country as a global AI powerhouse. By expanding AI compute infrastructure, fostering indigenous AI models, enhancing digital public infrastructure, and investing in talent development, India is creating an inclusive and innovation-driven ecosystem. The emphasis on open data, affordable access to high-performance computing, and AI-driven solutions tailored to local needs ensures that the benefits of AI reach businesses, researchers, and citizens alike. As AI adoption accelerates across industries, India’s proactive approach is not only strengthening its digital economy but also paving the way for self-reliance in critical technologies. With a clear vision for the future, India is set to become a leader in AI innovation, shaping the global AI landscape in the years to come.

Source: Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology

Click to see in PDF

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Santosh Kumar/ Ritu Kataria/ Saurabh Kalia

(Release ID: 2108810) Visitor Counter : 108

MIL OSI Asia Pacific News –
March 7, 2025
MIL-OSI Asia-Pac: HKETO, Brussels celebrates Chinese New Year in Madrid and Barcelona (with photos)

Source: Hong Kong Government special administrative region

HKETO, Brussels celebrates Chinese New Year in Madrid and Barcelona (with photos)
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The Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in Brussels (HKETO, Brussels) hosted Chinese New Year receptions in Madrid and Barcelona, Spain, on March 3 and 4 (Spanish time) respectively, concluding the series of celebration for the Year of the Snake. The reception in Barcelona was officiated by the Secretary for Innovation, Technology and Industry, Professor Sun Dong, who led a delegation of representatives from Hong Kong’s innovation and technology (I&T) sector to attend the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2025 in Barcelona. The visit aimsto strengthen ties and co-operation between Hong Kong and Spain in the field of I&T, promote Hong Kong’s I&T advantages, and explore overseas business opportunities for Hong Kong’s I&T sector. At the reception, the Special Representative for Hong Kong Economic and Trade Affairs to the European Union, Ms Shirley Yung, highlighted in her welcoming remarks that under “one country”, Hong Kong has convenient and often priority access to the huge Mainland market, while maintaining the qualities of an international city under “two systems”. “These distinct advantages are recognised in the latest international ranking, in which Hong Kong is ranked among the world’s top three international financial centres,” Ms Yung added. At the reception in Madrid, HKETO, Brussels took the opportunity to showcase Hong Kong’s unique East-meets-West culture by staging a music performance featuring two Hong Kong flutists and one German cellist, who performed both classical Chinese and Spanish music, as well as contemporary Hong Kong pop. The two receptions in Madrid and Barcelona attracted over 200 guests from the sectors of government, business, culture, academia and media in Spain. They were co-organised with Invest Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) and with the support of the Spain Hong Kong Business Association. The MWC is one of the world’s leading technology fairs where tens of thousands of technology experts and companies gather. This year, the Hong Kong delegation include heads of the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTPC), Cyberport, the Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute, and the Hong Kong Microelectronics Research and Development Institute, as well as representatives of 24 Hong Kong I&T enterprises and institutions. The HKSTPC and the HKTDC co-ordinate the participation of the I&T representatives in the Hong Kong Tech Pavilion at the MWC.

Ends/Thursday, March 6, 2025Issued at HKT 20:47

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MIL OSI Asia Pacific News –

March 7, 2025
MIL-OSI Asia-Pac: London ETO greets Year of Snake in Norway (with photos)

Source: Hong Kong Government special administrative region

London ETO greets Year of Snake in Norway (with photos)
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The Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office, London (London ETO) and the Norway-Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce hosted a Year of the Snake reception in Oslo, Norway, on March 5 (Oslo time). The Director-General of the London ETO, Mr Gilford Law, delivered a virtual welcome speech at the reception. He highlighted that Hong Kong is an unparalleled destination for businesses and investors, thanks to its free and open investment environment, as well as its simple and low tax system. Mr Law said, “The number of companies in Hong Kong with overseas or Mainland parent companies rose to 9 960 in 2024, while the number of start-ups in Hong Kong increased to 4 694, both reaching record highs. These figures demonstrate that Hong Kong is becoming increasingly attractive to businesses and remains an ideal place for Mainland and overseas enterprises to set up or expand their operations. ” Mr Law added, “On top of attracting businesses, Hong Kong is also attracting tourists with its dynamic calendar of world-class events. In 2024, Hong Kong welcomed close to 45 million international visitors, a 31 per cent increase from 2023. Stepping into 2025, Hong Kong, as the ‘Events Capital of Asia’, is set to host an array of high-profile business, sports, arts, and cultural events.” The reception was well attended by over 80 guests in Norway from the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the business, academic and cultural sectors. The London ETO will continue to celebrate the Year of the Snake among the countries under its purview.

Ends/Thursday, March 6, 2025Issued at HKT 23:33

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MIL OSI Asia Pacific News –

March 7, 2025
MIL-OSI USA: What You Need to Know about NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 Mission

Source: NASA

Four crew members are preparing to launch to the International Space Station as part of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 mission to perform research, technology demonstrations, and maintenance activities aboard the microgravity laboratory.
NASA astronauts Anne McClain, Nichole Ayers, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov will lift off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The flight is the 10th crew rotation mission with SpaceX to the space station, and the 11th human spaceflight as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
As teams progress through Dragon spacecraft milestones for Crew-10, they also are preparing a second-flight Falcon 9 booster for the mission. Once all rocket and spacecraft system checkouts are complete and all components are certified for flight, teams will mate Dragon to the Falcon 9 rocket in SpaceX’s hangar at the launch site. The integrated spacecraft and rocket will then be rolled to the pad and raised to vertical for a dry dress rehearsal with the crew and an integrated static fire test prior to launch.

Selected by NASA as an astronaut in 2013, this will be McClain’s second spaceflight. A colonel in the U.S. Army, she earned her bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, and holds master’s degrees in Aerospace Engineering, International Security, and Strategic Studies. The Spokane, Washington, native was an instructor pilot in the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopter and is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School in Patuxent River, Maryland. McClain has more than 2,300 flight hours in 24 rotary and fixed-wing aircraft, including more than 800 in combat, and was a member of the U.S. Women’s National Rugby Team. On her first spaceflight, McClain spent 204 days as a flight engineer during Expeditions 58 and 59 and completed two spacewalks, totaling 13 hours and 8 minutes. Since then, she has served in various roles, including branch chief and space station assistant to the chief of NASA’s Astronaut Office. Follow @astroannimal on X and @astro_annimal on Instagram.
This mission will be the first spaceflight for Ayers, who was selected as a NASA astronaut in 2021. Ayers is a major in the U.S. Air Force and the first member of NASA’s 2021 astronaut class named to a crew. The Colorado native graduated from the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs with a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and a minor in Russian, and was a member of the academy’s varsity volleyball team. She later earned a master’s in Computational and Applied Mathematics from Rice University in Houston. Ayers served as an instructor pilot and mission commander in the T-38 ADAIR and F-22 Raptor, leading multinational and multiservice missions worldwide. She has more than 1,400 total flight hours, including more than 200 in combat. Follow @astro_ayers on X and @astro_ayers on Instagram.
With 113 days in space, Crew-10 will mark Onishi’s second trip to the space station. After being selected as an astronaut by JAXA in 2009, he flew as a flight engineer for Expeditions 48 and 49, becoming the first Japanese astronaut to robotically capture the Cygnus spacecraft. He also constructed a new experimental environment aboard Kibo, the station’s Japanese experiment module. After his first spaceflight, Onishi became certified as a JAXA flight director, leading the team responsible for operating Kibo from JAXA Mission Control in Tsukuba, Japan. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the University of Tokyo, and was a pilot for All Nippon Airways, flying more than 3,700 flight hours in the Boeing 767. Follow astro_onishi on X.
The Crew-10 mission also will be Peskov’s first spaceflight. Before his selection as a cosmonaut in 2018, he earned a degree in Engineering from the Ulyanovsk Civil Aviation School and was a co-pilot on the Boeing 757 and 767 aircraft for airlines Nordwind and Ikar. Assigned as a test cosmonaut in 2020, he has additional experience in skydiving, zero-gravity training, scuba diving, and wilderness survival.

Following liftoff, the Falcon 9 rocket will accelerate Dragon to approximately 17,500 mph. Once in orbit, the crew and SpaceX mission control in Hawthorne, California, will monitor a series of maneuvers that will guide Dragon to the forward-facing port of the station’s Harmony module. The spacecraft is designed to dock autonomously, but the crew can take control and pilot manually, if necessary.
After docking, Crew-10 will be welcomed aboard the station by the seven-member crew of Expedition 72 and conduct a short handover period on science and maintenance activities with the departing Crew-9 crew members. Then, NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Suni Williams, Butch Wilmore, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov will undock from the space station and return to Earth. Ahead of Crew-9 return, mission teams will review weather conditions at the splashdown sites off the coast of Florida prior to departure from station.
Crew-10 will conduct new scientific research to prepare for human exploration beyond low Earth orbit and benefit humanity on Earth. The crew is scheduled to conduct material flammability tests for future spacecraft designs, engage with students via ham radio and use its existing hardware to test a backup lunar navigation solution, and participate in an integrated study to better understand physiological and psychological changes to the human body to provide valuable insights for future deep space missions.
These are just a few of the more than 200 scientific experiments and technology demonstrations taking place during the mission.
While aboard the orbiting laboratory, Crew-10 will welcome a Soyuz spacecraft with three new crew members, including NASA astronaut Jonny Kim, and they will bid farewell to the Soyuz carrying NASA astronaut Don Pettit. The crew also is expected to see the arrival of the SpaceX Dragon, Roscosmos Progress, and Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus cargo spacecraft, as well as the short-duration private Axiom Mission 4 crew.
The cadre will fly aboard the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, named Endurance, which previously flew NASA’s SpaceX Crew-3, Crew-5, and Crew-7 missions.
Commercial crew missions enable NASA to maximize use of the space station, where astronauts have lived and worked continuously for more than 24 years, testing technologies, performing research, and developing the skills needed to operate future commercial destinations in low Earth orbit, and explore farther from Earth. Research conducted on the space station benefits people on Earth and paves the way for future long-duration missions to the Moon and beyond through NASA’s Artemis missions.
Learn more about the space station, its research, and crew, at: https://www.nasa.gov/station

MIL OSI USA News –

March 7, 2025
MIL-OSI Security: Turkish national arrested for allegedly selling counterfeit goods at mall kiosks

Source: Office of United States Attorneys

DAYTON, Ohio – A man who operates kiosks at a local mall was arrested today by federal agents for allegedly trafficking counterfeit goods.

Emre Teski, 25, is a citizen of Turkey and illegally entered the United States of America from Mexico on September 10, 2022. Teski admitted to illegally crossing the international boundary without being inspected by an immigration officer at a designated Port of Entry. On January 3, 2024, Teski was ordered removed from the United States, but has since appealed this decision and was permitted employment authorization while his appeal is pending. Teski operates kiosks selling counterfeit goods at the Mall at Fairfield Commons in Beavercreek.

According to charging documents, Teski ran one kiosk that primarily sold replica professional soccer jerseys and hats containing trademarked soccer teams, including FC Barcelona, Club Internacional de Fútbol Miami, Manchester City and Arsenal. Teski operated another kiosk that sold primarily oversized slippers that look like sneakers and included Nike and Air Jordan trademarks.

Teski allegedly sold an investigator counterfeit Nike slippers that illegally used the trademark Nike Swoosh. It is alleged that he also sold a counterfeit pink Messi jersey.

Agents executed a search warrant at the kiosks today and seized numerous items containing confirmed or suspected counterfeit trademarks.

Trafficking counterfeit goods is a federal crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Kelly A. Norris, Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio; and Jared Murphey, Acting Special Agent in Charge, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Detroit; announced the charges. Assistant United States Attorney Ryan A. Saunders is representing the United States in this case.

A criminal complaint merely contains allegations, and defendants are presumed innocent unless proven guilty in a court of law.

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MIL Security OSI –

March 7, 2025
MIL-OSI Video: Afghanistan, Ukraine & other topics – Daily Press Briefing

Source: United Nations (Video News)

Noon Briefing by Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesperson for the Secretary-General.

Highlights:
– Central Emergency Response Fund
– Afghanistan
– Ukraine
– Democratic Republic of the Congo
– Occupied Palestinian Territory
– Yemen/Security Council
– Mexico
– Financial Contributions

CENTRAL EMERGENCY RESPONSE FUND
With global humanitarian funding being scaled back precipitously, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs announced today that $110 million has been allocated from the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF).
The aim is to boost life-saving assistance in 10 of the world’s most underfunded and neglected crises across Africa, Asia and Latin America.
OCHA warns that more than 300 million people around the world urgently need humanitarian aid, but funding has been dwindling annually, with this year’s levels projected to drop to a record low.
Tom Fletcher, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, said that for countries battered by conflict, climate change and economic turmoil, brutal funding cuts don’t mean that humanitarian needs disappear.
The new funding will go towards Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, Chad, Honduras, Mauritania, Niger, Somalia, Sudan, Venezuela and Zambia.
Resources will also support vulnerable people from climate shocks.

AFGHANISTAN
And turning to Afghanistan, OCHA is warning that the country continues to face a severe humanitarian crisis defined by decades of conflict, entrenched poverty, climate-induced shocks and rising protection risks, especially for women and girls.
More than half of the population – almost 23 million people – are in need of humanitarian assistance in the country. This number is one of the highest globally, second only to Sudan – where 30 million people currently need aid and protection.
Both food insecurity and malnutrition remain stubbornly high.
During the first quarter of this year, nearly 15 million people – one in every three Afghans – will experience high levels of acute food insecurity. This is according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC.
Nearly 3.5 million children under 5 and more than 1 million pregnant and breastfeeding women are expected to become acutely malnourished.
Explosive hazards continue to pose a lethal threat, with an estimated 55 people killed or injured every month – most of them children.

Full Highlights: https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/noon-briefing-highlight?date%5Bvalue%5D%5Bdate%5D=06%20March%202025

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EP_F6noLmbw

MIL OSI Video –

March 7, 2025
MIL-OSI Video: Pledge to Climate, Peace and Security on Yemen – Security Council Media Stakeout | United Nations

Source: United Nations (Video News)

Joint statement of the Security Council members signatories of the Joint Pledges related to Climate, Peace and Security on Yemen read by Ambassador Christina Markus Lassen, PR of Denmark. Other participants – Slovenia, Guyana, Republic of Korea, Panama, Greece, United Kingdom, Sierra Leone, France.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mt_A-7c0wnM

MIL OSI Video –

March 7, 2025
MIL-OSI Video: Preparing for the Field Operations Academy – CBP Hiring Process | CBP

Source: United States of America – Federal Government Departments (video statements)

If you’re interested in becoming a U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officer, it’s important that you’re prepared to attend the Field Operations Academy in Glynco, Georgia. It’s here that new recruits learn the physical, technical, and mental skills they’ll need on the job. This video breaks down what you need to know about preparing to attend the academy, what you’ll learn while you’re there, life at the academy, and next steps after graduating.

Start Your Application: https://www.cbp.gov/careers/apply-now

Instagram ➤ https://instagram.com/CBPgov
Facebook ➤ https://facebook.com/CBPgov
Twitter ➤ https://twitter.com/CBP
Official Website ➤ https://www.cbp.gov

#cbp
#academy
#lawenforcement
#employment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czNLl92exLs

MIL OSI Video –

March 7, 2025

Category: Europe

India’s AI RevolutionA Roadmap to Viksit Bharat

India’s AI Revolution

A Roadmap to Viksit Bharat