DII

COOPERATION FOR DEFENCE

DEFENCE, INDUSTRY, INNOVATION 23 NOVEMBER 2018

Conference „Defence, industry, innovation – new EU policies” is behind us. On 23rd of November defence experts, representatives of Polish Ministries, European Commission, scientists and people directly from the industry have met to debate.

Main goals of the event are accurately described in a letter that sent to the organizers by Mrs. Elżbieta Bieńkowska, European Commissioner for the Internal Market and Industry. We can read there: „If we take into consideration last 2 years, it is out of question, that they have been a breakthrough for Europe and the european defence industry. (…) European Defence Fund along with other initiatives by member countries create a good basis for a new EU defence policy. 

Our aim is to create a competitive, efficient and inovative defence industry able to ensure safety of European citizens. Key factor to achieve this assumption is to support cooperation between enterprises from all EU countries in search for synergy and to utilize opportunities that the EU shared market offers.

During the conference we could learn that in the EU over 80% of public orders and over 90% of R&D projects in defence is implemented on a national level. This fragmentation results in creation of many similar products that are not competitive on global scale. We have over 170 different arming systems in the EU when the US have just 30. We have 17 different types of thanks, in the US there is ONE.

In Europe we have more producers of helicopters than governments able to buy them. The need for transnational cooperation and synergy is the main aim of European Defence Industry Development Program (EDIDP), which will distribute 500 mln euros between consortia of European enterprises from at least three different countries.

EDIDP is a program preparing the European defence industry and European Commission and administration of Member Countries before implementing the European Defence Fund (EDF) that will hold 13 bln euros to distribute through 2021-2027.