The legislation informally agreed upon on Wednesday evening between MEPs and the Danish Presidency of the Council will increase funding for defence-related investment by amending existing EU programmes – the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP), Horizon Europe, the European Defence Fund (EDF), the Digital Europe programme (DEP) and the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) – to channel EU funding towards defence.

During negotiations, MEPs advocated for the scope of the measures to include resilience, such as critical infrastructure protection, disaster response, and election integrity. They pushed for the scheme to also improve resilience against cyber threats on critical digital infrastructure.

MEPs also advocated for the legislation to allow for more support for the defence industry of Ukraine, and secured the country’s participation into the European Defence Fund.

The Horizon Europe programme will support civil applications with potential military applications (dual…