The EP approved the budget for the European Defence Fund, which offers synergies with security, AI and space research in Horizon Europe and Digital Europe.
On 29 April 2021, the European Parliament (EP) signed off the European Defence Fund, which will support military research projects between 2021 and 2027. The budget of the Fund amounts to €7.9 billion, lower than originally proposed. It will finance projects jointly agreed by Member States that are compatible with the European Union’s defence priorities, taking into account cooperation within other regional and international organisations such as NATO. Like other programmes of the current Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), the Defence Fund programme 2021-2027 will enter into force retroactively from 1 January 2021.
The EP had reached a deal with the Council on the Fund already on 14 December under the German Presidency. The Fund will support collaborative projects involving at least three participants in the areas of research, prototype development, certification, and testing of defence technologies and products. It aims at a wider inclusion of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and mid-caps in defence industry supply chains. Eight percent of the funding are reserved for the development of disruptive technologies. Intended to contribute to the reduction of duplication and strengthening interoperability of the defence systems used by European armed forces, the Defence Fund aimed at generating benefits for Member States and their industries. Nevertheless, the Fund was heavily debated in the EP Plenary this April. A minority even argued that it should never have been launched in the first place, given the ongoing need to fight COVID-19 and rescue European economies from the crisis.
The Defence Fund is an industrial programme that does not focus on dual use technologies, but nevertheless, offers synergies with other research and innovation oriented programmes such as Horizon Europe or the new Digital Europe Programme in the areas of security research, cybersecurity and space. It also covers support to projects in the area of artificial intelligence, which will be subject to special ethical screening and scrutiny that is also applied in Horizon Europe. Given the technological complexity of these areas, the Defence Fund’s projects will be in need of experts from academia and tech, who can participate if cleared by their respective national security agencies. Entities and companies from third countries will be able to participate in Defence Fund activities on their own expenses, if the security interests of the EU are guaranteed. Intellectual property generated in Defence Fund projects must in any case remain in the EU.
(Picture Copyright @Getty Images/AFP/P. Hertzog)