Europe's security increasingly depends on its ability to innovate faster than its adversaries and defend its digital infrastructure with the same urgency it applies to conventional deterrence. This breakfast brings together senior institutional and industry voices to examine how NATO and the EU are integrating cyber resilience and emerging technologies into their collective defence posture.

Europe stands at an inflection point. The strategies are written, the commitments are made, the funding is moving, what remains is delivery. From industrial mobilisation to operational readiness, from alliance governance to societal resilience, the question facing European defence today is not what we intend, but what we can deliver. That is precisely what this Summit is here to address.

Europe’s defence industrial base is facing a historic contradiction. Defence demand has surged to unprecedented levels, with hundreds of billions of euros committed to rearmament and replenishment, yet the ability to convert orders into delivered capabilities remains constrained by labour shortages, fragile supply chains, limited access to critical inputs and insufficient long-term investment visibility.

While prime contractors are under pressure to scale production rapidly, defence manufacturing remains structurally difficult to accelerate. Highly specialised skills, long qualification cycles, and deep dependencies on Tier-2 and Tier-3 suppliers mean that production capacity cannot simply be multiplied without coordinated action. Without targeted intervention, Europe risks falling short of its readiness ambitions not for lack of demand, but for lack of delivery capacity.

This panel will explore how Europe’s defence industry can scale manufacturing at crisis speed without compromising quality or resilience. It will examine the balance between public support and private investment, how scarce industrial capacity should be prioritised across competing programmes, and how governments can provide the predictability required for industry to commit to large-scale expansion. The discussion will focus on turning Europe’s defence spending surge into sustained and measurable industrial output by 2030.

Europe’s defence ambitions are increasingly shaped by a simple but unresolved question: how decisions are taken, implemented, and enforced in practice. As the EU enters a delivery phase marked by higher spending, industrial scale-up, and greater responsibility for its own security, existing decision-making arrangements are coming under growing strain. Across Brussels and national capitals, the debate is moving toward more structural answers. Senior EU leaders have openly questioned whether current governance tools are sufficient, pointing to ideas such as stronger joint decision-making in security and defence, more systematic coordination among Defence Ministers, better use of existing treaty provisions on mutual defence, and even more far-reaching concepts such as a European Defence Union, a European Security Council, or common military structures. These discussions reflect a broader shift away from purely national approaches toward acting collectively as Europeans.

This panel examines what these evolving debates mean for delivery and readiness. Participants will explore how Europe can clarify authority, streamline its defence decision chain, and align political responsibility with operational execution — while preserving legitimacy and coherence with NATO. The focus will be on governance choices that make joint action faster, more predictable, and credible in a more contested security environment.

As geopolitical tensions rise and Europe confronts an increasingly volatile security environment, the question is no longer whether the EU should strengthen its defence capabilities—but how. Against this backdrop, the idea of a European single market for defence has moved to the centre of policy discussions, as policymakers, industry leaders and experts grapple with how to overcome fragmentation and build a more coherent European defence ecosystem. In a recent vote, the European Parliament set out proposals for a more integrated European defence market, aimed at closing critical capability gaps, boosting industrial capacity, and enhancing strategic autonomy. Measures such as increased EU-level investment, joint procurement, simplified rules, and incentives for cross-border cooperation reflect a growing consensus that Europe must make better use of its collective resources.

At the same time, significant challenges remain. National sovereignty concerns, divergent industrial interests, regulatory complexity, and the need to maintain fair competition all complicate efforts to deepen integration. Questions also persist about how such a market would interact with NATO, global supply chains, and existing defence partnerships. What would it take to make it work? And what are the risks of not pursuing it?

A privileged gathering bringing together defence industry primes, SMEs, Member State representatives, and institutional players to engage directly with EDA leadership on Europe's most pressing capability, armament, and planning priorities — in an exclusive setting designed for candid, high-level exchange.

Three years of full-scale war in Ukraine have transformed European defence from a theoretical planning exercise into a test of real operational effectiveness. The conflict has demonstrated that battlefield outcomes are increasingly shaped by information superiority, ammunition availability, resilient logistics, and rapid combat-driven innovation - often outweighing numerical force size or platform sophistication.

While these lessons are now widely recognised across European capitals, translating them into concrete capability priorities remains politically and institutionally challenging. Defence investment decisions continue to favour high-visibility platform modernisation, even as shortages in ammunition, air defence, C4ISR and sustainment constrain real readiness. At the same time, European defence R&D cycles remain largely disconnected from operational feedback, limiting the speed at which combat-tested solutions can be fielded at scale.

This panel will explore how Europe can systematically translate Ukraine’s operational lessons into capability investment priorities. It will examine whether ammunition, expendables and enablers should take precedence over platform modernisation, how to embed combat operators into European R&D and procurement cycles, and how these lessons should inform Europe’s readiness trajectory toward 2030.

Europe's Defence Readiness Roadmap 2030 places naval capability at the centre of its ambition to close critical defence gaps, establishing a dedicated Maritime Priority Capability Area. The EDA, Member States, and industry are jointly defining the naval capabilities needed to protect EU territory, Exclusive Economic Zones, and vital maritime trade routes — with Maritime European Defence Projects of Common Interest set to become the primary delivery mechanism, developed in close alignment with the Capability Development Plan and ongoing PESCO initiatives. This panel examines how forthcoming Maritime EDPCIs can build upon existing PESCO naval programmes — including the European Patrol Corvette, the European Combat Vessel, and Critical Seabed Infrastructure Protection — to address Europe's most pressing naval shortfalls and enhance maritime preparedness, resilience, and freedom of action. These efforts are unfolding against a rapidly deteriorating security environment: the war in Ukraine, rising instability across the Middle East, the risk of disruption to vital chokepoints such as the Strait of Hormuz, and intensifying competition in the Arctic — making credible European naval deterrence and the protection of critical sea lines of communication a strategic imperative.