Reaction to the Commission’s white paper on the future of European defence

Today the European Commission published its White Paper on the future of digital defence.

Cecilia Bonefeld-Dahl, Director General of DIGITALEUROPE said:  

“Europe is finally recognising that the future of defence is digital.

The new European Armament Technological Roadmap is exactly what we asked for: an opportunity to invest in critical technologies like #AI and quantum. We must also support Europe’s strengths in connectivity, energy tech, drone tech, and manufacturing… But without dedicated funding and large scale EU procurement, it risks becoming just another policy document. 

We also support a single market for defence. The omnibus proposal must be ambitious enough to tackle the slow and fragmented national procurement cycles that are holding back our innovation and adoption of new technologies and push European interoperability in defence tech.

For the upcoming strategic dialogue, we stand ready to represent the critical and dual use technologies that are at the heart of European security”. 

Background 

The war in Ukraine has shown that innovation cycles no longer take years; they can be cut down to months or even weeks. Technologies like secure connectivity, cloud computing, AI-driven battlefield intelligence, anti-jamming tech and autonomous drones are proving to be game-changers in hybrid warfare. 

To make this vision a reality, we need to move fast. DIGITALEUROPE fully supports Pan-EU procurement and investment in security technologies, without scale we will never build the innovation of the future and the capacity to defend ourselves. We also support the push for standardisation and interoperability, so European armed forces can work as one rather than in 27 fragmented silos. But ambition alone won’t cut it, Europe needs to invest at scale, streamline procurement, and bring in the private sector to keep up with fast-moving threats. The battlefield is already digital, and it’s time we acted like it.