Thanks a lot, Kaja and Henna, and thanks a lot for all cooperation that we had during the preparation of the Roadmap. Thanks a lot also to the Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen for her personal leadership and of course to our teams and Cabinet members. Its really great what we had managed to achieve.

In my view, this Roadmap is, what I would call, the revolutionary  strategic architectural plan of the major EU building exercise to build European Defence Readiness 2030.

Its like building European Defence Dome. Defence Dome for Peace. If you want Peace - prepare for Defence and Detterence.

Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen on October 14, 2025 said: “It is imperative that when it comes to our own defence posture, we are coordinated, we are precise and we are fast.” That is, in my view, what the Roadmap is about: how to be coordinated, to be precise and to be fast.

Definitely, it demands mobilization of all the efforts and all the available finances - at national and on EU level.

Like Executive Vice-President Virkkunen has said, the Roadmap indicates: Europeans are going to invest till 2035  - 6.8 trln euros. Into real defence - as usually, about 50% will be invested, which means 3.4 trln. euros.  Its a real Big Bang - mainly based on national defence spending, which will be more or less 100 times bigger than EU defence spending in next MFF.

We want to achieve Defence Readiness before 2030. Why? Because of Putins plans. We need to deter aggression, prevent war, preserve peace. That is what the Roadmap is about.

In order to achieve Defence Readiness 2030, we need to reach new NATO capability targets before 2030. From the public information we can guess that now we are at the level of only 50% of those targets.

In order to achieve that goal, now we need to move from the Opportunities stage into Delivery stage. Until now we were creating Opportunities (financial, industrial policy, legal, simplification opportunities) for Member States to start to develop their capabilities, now we need to move into Delivery stage: contracts, production, modernization, procurement.

From that point of view, the Roadmap is a Roadmap for Delivery. I would call it a Mega Plan for Delivery: with clear timetables, goals and reporting obligation. That is why we can call today a “Delivery Day”, a “D-Day” for Delivery. This Plan and reporting on progress is how we are going to mobilize first of all ourselves, Member States and EU institutions, to deliver.

That is why the roadmap is about Delivery Planning, and about Delivery of Flagships.

What we are creating with the Roadmap - is European self-sufficiency in defence. Self-sufficiency in defence means Independence, as the Commission President says.

Self-sufficiency means:

                - our own capacity to produce enough;

                - our own capacity to modernize defence production;

                - and our capacity to finance European production and growth of European defence industry.

Flagships are  an exercise  to implement pan-European defence projects. Till now only in Space we have good experience to implement big pan-European high-tech projects, like Galileo or Copernicus. In defence there is no such an experience. That makes us weaker. That is why we shall go through “learning by doing” process - I am sure that this time we shall be much more successful than previously. 

“European Drone Defence Initiative” and “Eastern Flank Watch” are the projects, which can be started immediately in order to learn how to create success. They can be realized together with Ukraine. And I am sure that other two flagships - “European Air Shield” and “European Space Defence Shield” will be also a real success.

Ukraine deserves our support. Roadmap has a promise - Reparation Loan to be realized before the end of 2025. And Ukraine is ready to help us with its know-how and battle tested experience. We are building European Defence Dome together.

In building the European Defence Dome we need to overcome fragmentation of European defence industry and we need to  spend tax payers money in the most effective way in order to strengthen European defence industry.

As an example, incentivization for joint procurement can cut prices for defence production by 30%. The plan is to increase joint procurement from 20% to 40% by the end of 2027. Taking into account all defence investment up to 2035, it can save up to 200 bln euros for national governments and tax payers.

Also, incentivization to spend more defence money with the European defence industry can bring back with each additional 10% spent in Europe an additional 150 bln euros  spent with  our defence industry, which otherwise would   be spent in third countries up to 2035. Now, I would like to remind, we are spending around of 40% in Europe, and we want to increase this up to 55%.

There are also very ambitious goals on Military mobility and Single Market in defence equipment, which are crucial for development of military readiness.

To conclude, implementation of the Roadmap is giving a very heavy tasks and  mandate to Commission, other EU institutions and Member States, which will demand huge efforts on our side to deliver.  And I am sure that we shall  deliver Defence Readiness 2030. And I hope the Council will support our ambition to build the European Defence Dome.