Building on its plans to protect peace and ramp up our continent’s defence readiness, the European Commission has unveiled a set of measures that should significantly enhance military mobility across Europe. The measures will create an EU-wide military mobility area where troops, equipment and military assets can move around quickly and smoothly.
Simultaneously, the Commission has also presented a roadmap that will transform the EU’s defence industry by boosting disruptive innovation and supporting emerging defence players.
To enable military movement at speed and scale, and bring us closer to a ‘military Schengen’, the measures will
Remove regulatory barriers, for instance, having one single permission procedure to move military devices for all 27 EU countries
Create an emergency framework for fast-track procedures and priority access to infrastructure
Improve readiness of transport infrastructure, by upgrading key EU military mobility corridors to civilian and military-purpose standards and identifying and protecting strategic civilian/military infrastructure with a new resilience toolbox
Pool and share capabilities for transport and logistics
Strengthen governance and coordination
Deepen EU cooperation with NATO and other partners.
At the same time, the EU has issued a roadmap to unleash disruptive innovation – new technologies that fundamentally change how things are done – and modernise Europe’s defence industry. It draws on lessons learnt from the war in Ukraine which shows how defence technologies are transforming modern warfare.
It sets out steps to bring together the deep tech and defence communities, speed up the use of advanced technologies in military capabilities and boost Europe’s production capacity through innovation.
The roadmap focuses on four priorities
supporting investment in defence companies
accelerating the development of new technologies
expanding access to defence capabilities
fostering the skills needed to sustain Europe’s technological edge
The Commission will start implementing the roadmap’s proposed actions immediately.
The military mobility measures will be presented to the Council and European Parliament for adoption.
