European defence industry transformation roadmap

Key Points

The EU Youth Test at the EESC was applied to this opinion. The ESDN Youth  was chosen by a group of interested youth organisations to represent all of them during the opinion-making process.

The EESC:

• fully supports the adoption of the EU Defence Industry Transformation Roadmap and considers it a key instrument for strengthening Europe’s defence readiness and industrial capacity; 
• calls for the restoration of European industrial strategic autonomy as the central objective of the roadmap, enabling the EU to design, manufacture, maintain and develop critical defence systems with resilient and scalable supply chains; 
• emphasises that technological sovereignty must be reinforced through leadership in knowledge, skills, engineering, intellectual property, technology transfer and production capacities across the entire defence supply chain, including critical raw materials; 
• stresses that funding for the roadmap should not undermine existing programmes supporting the European Defence Technological and Industrial Base (EDTIB) or compromise the EU’s social, digital and environmental transition objectives; 
• recommends that the transformation of the defence industrial base benefits the broader European industrial ecosystem by involving SMEs, start-ups and dual-use sectors such as advanced manufacturing and automotive industries; 
• urges Member States to promote joint procurement and develop common frameworks for the qualification and certification of defence technologies in order to reduce fragmentation, accelerate deployment and strengthen interoperability; 
• highlights the need to simplify regulatory and administrative procedures while safeguarding transparency, equal treatment and sound financial management in defence innovation and procurement programmes;
• supports measures to strengthen skills development, workforce mobility and reskilling, particularly enabling workers from adjacent sectors to transition into defence-related industries through coordinated education, training and lifelong learning initiatives.