Honorable members of the European Parliament,

I am pleased to discuss with you the implementation of the space and defence activities in 2024. You know that those activities now are under my responsibility, but during the whole 2024 year I was ordinary Member of European Parliament, who was looking how to effectively implement parliamentary control of the previous European Commission.

All of us we know, that in the light of Russias aggression against Ukraine Defence (and Space for Defence) became a strategic priority for Commission, European Parliament and Member States, but last year, in 2024, the whole EU spending for Space and Defence, which now are under my portfolio in Headings 1 and 5, reached only 1.2 bln euros for defence and 2.7 bln euros for space, when the whole MFF (including RRF) spending during 2024 was more than 190 bln euros. So I will talk how we spend only 1.95% of our annual spending last year.

Nevertheless, its very important to be very effective in insuring accountability and transparency in the European defence spending, because the EU provides unique added value in defence and space with EU defence industrial policy instruments and EU financial resources by assisting Member States to develop their defence capabilities and also by pooling resources for strategic projects that individual Member States could not achieve alone. And much bigger financial resources started to come into development of European defence capabilities.

I am glad to report that past ECA recommendations, related with defence issues, have been fully implemented. Longer term strategies on development of defence industry and military mobility are approved or will be presented very soon.

Also it is important to note that there is no mention of any issue on space (Heading 1) and defence activities (Heading 5) in this year ECA report on implementation of 2024 budget.

My teams and I are fully committed to continue implementing the programmes under my portfolio in Headings 1 and 5 in line with the established controls systems and the principle of sound financial management, whilst ensuring that these programmes remain attractive and accessible.

I am glad to inform you that we are delivering: the established and new defence and programmes are progressing well.

  • the ASAP programme (support of ammunition production) adopted on in June 2023 is implemented:  with 500 million euros of EU funding we achieved that we are able to produce 2 mln rounds of ammunition, instead of 300 thousand in 2022 (200 mln euros of payment in 2024)
  • the EDIRPA programme adopted in October 2023 is implemented: with 300 million euros of EU funding, the Commission incentivised common procurements for 11 billion euros. (Call published in 2024, 0 payment in 2024).
  • With European Defence Fund the EU has become one of the top three defence R&D investors in Europe. More than 150 collaborative R&D projects have been launched amounting to an EDF funding contribution of 4 billion euros. [700 million euros of payment in 2024]
  • The Space programs and IRIS² are delivering, with payments to entrusted entities and industry reaching a total amount of 2.7 billion euros in 2024, successfully providing services to a large community of users.

In addition, I thank the EP for the positive outcome of the Trilogue negotiation and political agreement reached for EDIP that should be adopted very soon, with both tested and new important defence industrial programmes, like SEAP or EDPCI.

Besides looking how to better manage our financial resources, we need to look also how to improve governance and administration of defence issues.

We recognise that industry can face challenges with complex bureaucratic procedures. To address this, the Commission has put forward the Defence Readiness Omnibus, adopted on 17 June 2025, which streamlines public procurement, permitting, reporting obligations, and cross-border cooperation.

It is now being discussed in this House and in the Council. A swift political agreement and smooth adoption would further help to reinforce our capabilities.

As presented in the Defence Readiness Roadmap 2030, we also suggest to improve governance of big regional or pan-European defence projects and we prepared targeted initiatives to address emerging threats — such as the “Eastern Flank Watch”, “European Drone Defence Initiative” announced by President von der Leyen in the State of the Union speech.

We will soon present a Defence Transformation Roadmap and a new Military Mobility package, which will include the recommendations of the European Court of Auditors. 

The support of the European Parliament is a key element to implement our activities. It is worth noting that we implement the resources, that we received for space and defence activities, at 100%.However, most important is that the oversubscription in demands is increasing every year. It demonstrates that the needs are much bigger than the resources available in the EU budget today and that increased budget allocated to defence, and space could be easily absorbed by industry. An ambitious proposal for the next MFF, with 5 times increased defence and space spending up to 131 bln euros has been proposed by the Commission with a Resilience and Security, Defence industry and Space dedicated window under the European Competitiveness Fund. We always need to keep holistic view towards defence finances in Europe. We need to remember that European defence depends not only on MFF spending, but first of all on national defence spending. Till 2035 national defence spending will accumulate 6.8 trln euros, when spending from MFF will be around of 60 bln euros.

The ratio is 100 to 1. MFF defence spending is very important because it can be used to incentivize Member States to spend their defence money in a prudent way with more of joint procurement and more of European procurement. Joint procurement and European spending can save hundreds of billions of European tax payers money for European development.

Only an ambitious MFF will allow us to prudently invest in Europes security, defence and space readiness.

European Parliament, European Court of Auditors, Member States - we all need to do everything in order to achieve prudence in defence.