The European Union has reached a deal to slash bureaucracy across its defence sector, aiming to speed up military procurement and steer investment into the bloc’s arms industry as it races to rearm by 2030.
Negotiators for the Council and the European Parliament struck the provisional agreement on June 10, revising common rules to ease the administrative burden and shorten timelines for tenders, permits and cross-border cooperation.
“For a strategically autonomous Europe, defence capability and competitiveness go hand in hand,” said Cypriot deputy minister for European affairs Marilena Raouna, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union until the end of June. She called the accord a significant step for both the bloc’s defence capacity and its competitiveness.
The package, known as the fifth omnibus, forms part of a wider Brussels drive to relax regulation in sectors the EU wants to lead, from defence to digitalisation. The European Commission tabled it on June 17, 2025, under its White Paper for European Defence Readiness 2030, drawn up in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The reform would simplify management of the European Defence Fund (EDF), cut administrative requirements for applications and make the fund’s roll-out more predictable. It would also strengthen support for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), including a higher funding bonus for projects that involve smaller firms.
On permitting, the revision would set a harmonised framework capping approvals for defence-readiness projects at 120 working days. An application would be deemed approved if the competent authority failed to rule against it before the deadline expired.
National law could still allow exceptions to automatic approval where there was a serious risk to human health or national security.
The deal would also raise thresholds in the defence procurement directive, doubling the ceiling for goods and services to €900,000 to exempt smaller contracts and free authorities to focus on major projects. It introduces occasional joint procurement, a de minimis rule for contract changes and greater flexibility in framework agreements.
The agreement preserves the right of co-funding member states to access the results of EDF-backed projects and protects the intellectual property of the industrial bodies taking part.
It still requires formal endorsement by the 27 member states and the European Parliament’s plenary before it can take effect. Co-legislators would then carry out a legal and linguistic revision ahead of final adoption in the coming months.
