Opening Remarks
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.
Scaling the Unscalable, Manufacturing at Crisis Speed
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.
Keynote Speech by Commissioner Andrius Kubilius
Who Decides, Who Delivers? Fixing Europe’s Defence Decision Chain
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.
Towards a European Single Market for Defence?
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?
High-level VIP Lunch
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.
Keynote Speech Executive Vice-President Roxana Mînzatu
Networking Lunch
Keynote Speech Commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas
Moving Forces Faster: Military Mobility and the Logistics of European Deterrence
Exclusive Interview
What Ukraine Teaches Europe: Translating Lessons into Capability Priorities
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.
Coffee Break
Naval Defence in the Defence Readiness Roadmap 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.
Closing Remarks
Cocktail Reception
Opening Remarks
Allies in Transition: The Architecture of Shared Security
As the transatlantic security environment undergoes profound transformation, defence cooperation between Europe and North America is entering a new phase — one defined not only by burden-sharing, but by long-term strategic integration. This panel will explore the future of transatlantic defence cooperation and how European allies, together with partners such as the UK, Norway and Canada, can build a more resilient, interoperable, and capable security architecture across the Euro-Atlantic area.
Discussions will focus on how cooperation is evolving from traditional political coordination into practical mechanisms for joint capability development, industrial collaboration, procurement, innovation, and operational readiness. Attention will be given to the role of EU instruments such as SAFE, the future of transatlantic defence industrial cooperation, and how European initiatives can reinforce — rather than duplicate — NATO’s collective defence objectives. The focus will be on how to create scalable and predictable frameworks that strengthen both Europe’s defence capacity and the broader transatlantic partnership in an era of growing geopolitical competition. The conversation will address questions of governance, industrial access, strategic alignment, and technological cooperation, while considering how Europe can assume greater responsibility for its own security without weakening the cohesion of the Alliance.
Europe’s Arctic Moment: Securing Resources, Infrastructure and Strategic Resilience
The Arctic has long been recognised by the European Union as a region where environmental vulnerability, economic opportunity, and geopolitical interests intersect. The 2021 EU Arctic Strategy framed the Arctic as a space for peaceful cooperation, sustainability, and responsible engagement, while warning that growing interest in resources and transport routes could transform the region into an arena of strategic competition. Recent developments have confirmed that this risk has materialised, prompting the EU to move towards an updated Arctic strategy that reflects a more contested, security-relevant High North. This panel examines how Europe translates those principles into delivery at a time when energy security, critical raw materials, and defence readiness have become inseparable. With the Arctic – and Greenland in particular – holding significant potential for rare earths and other critical inputs essential for defence systems, clean technologies, and industrial resilience, the discussion will explore how Europe can secure access while upholding high environmental, social, and governance standards.
The focus will be on infrastructure investment, supply-chain resilience, and strategic partnerships that ensure Europe’s Arctic engagement is credible, responsible, and aligned with its broader security objectives.
Coffee Break
Countering Hybrid Threats: Strengthening Democratic Resilience and Information Integrity
Democratic systems have become primary targets of hybrid warfare. Disinformation, foreign funding, cyber operations, and coercive narratives increasingly aim to undermine trust in elections, institutions, and alliances. This panel examines how the European Democracy Shield can move from concept to operational protection, including its interaction with existing EU instruments such as the EEAS Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) toolbox. It will assess how EU institutions and Member States translate political intent into preventive, protective, and response measures across electoral systems, media ecosystems, and civic space. Industry, media, and technology actors will discuss their role in supporting democratic resilience. The focus will be on implementation challenges, cooperation mechanisms, and how credibility is measured when democratic processes come under pressure.
Networking Lunch
From NATO Ally to Industrial Partner: Advancing EU-TÜRKİYE Defence Cooperation
Türkiye’s defence industry has undergone a structural transformation over the past decade, with exports reaching $10 billion in 2025 and companies such as Aselsan, Baykar, and TUSAŞ now operating at the frontier of drone systems, air defence, naval platforms, and electronic warfare.
Concrete cooperation with European primes is already well underway: the Baykar–Leonardo joint venture on unmanned systems, the TUSAŞ–Airbus collaboration on trainer aircraft for Spain, and Aselsan's selection for NATO's Modular Ground-Based Air Defence programme all demonstrate a partnership dynamic that has outgrown its informal origins.
As Europe accelerates defence investment through SAFE, EDIP, and the Readiness Roadmap 2030, the question is no longer whether Türkiye is a relevant industrial partner, but how to structure that relationship in a way that is durable, governed, and consistent with EU frameworks.
This panel will examine what practical models of EU–Türkiye defence industrial cooperation look like in practice, drawing on existing joint ventures and bilateral agreements as a guide. It will assess the governance pathways available to expand Turkish industry's role within EU instruments, the political conditions required for broader access, and the mutual interests, on both sides, that make a more structured framework both necessary and achievable by 2030.
From Orbits to Operations: Making EU Space Assets Deliver for Defence Readiness 2030
Europe has moved from viewing space as a support function to treating it as a strategic enabler for deterrence, crisis management, and hybrid resilience. With Galileo, Copernicus, GOVSATCOM and the deployment of IRIS², the question is no longer whether Europe has space capabilities, but whether they are effectively integrated into operational planning and collective defence. This panel will examine how space-based PNT, ISR, secure connectivity and Earth observation are being embedded into NATO and EU defence concepts, from Eastern Flank deterrence to Arctic situational awareness. Speakers will discuss governance, command arrangements and user‑driven requirements so that space services move from fragmented programmes to a coherent operational architecture by 2030. The focus will be on delivery: how to ensure that satellites, ground segments and user terminals translate into actionable advantage at brigade, fleet and air‑defence level, rather than remaining siloed institutional assets.
Coffee Break
Interoperability by Design: Building Europe’s Integrated Defence Architecture
As Europe accelerates defence investment, interoperability has emerged as the decisive factor separating nominal capability from real military power. Despite shared threats and increasing budgets, European forces continue to operate across a fragmented landscape of platforms, command systems and logistics standards, undermining collective effectiveness and slowing operational response. NATO has long defined interoperability as the ability of forces to operate coherently together, yet in practice it is still too often addressed after procurement decisions are taken—through costly retrofitting, workarounds and delayed integration. In critical domains such as air and missile defence, C4ISR and logistics, the absence of common architectures and enforceable standards risks locking Europe into parallel national systems precisely at a moment when speed, resilience and integration are essential. This panel will explore how Europe can move from aspirational interoperability to interoperability by design. It will examine how NATO standardisation requirements can be enforced before procurement rather than after delivery, what governance model is needed to drive European C4ISR standardisation, and whether the political and institutional conditions exist to mandate a unified European air defence network within this decade. The discussion will focus on how standards, compliance mechanisms and accountability can be embedded at the outset to ensure that Europe’s growing defence investments translate into a truly integrated and operationally credible force by 2030.
Regulating While Competing: Governing AI Security in a Hostile Information Environment
Europe has sought to set global standards for AI governance, positioning regulations as both a democratic safeguard and a competitive advantage. Yet recent developments show that momentum is not guaranteed – key proposals have been paused or rethought amid political and economic pushback, raising questions about the EU’s ability to regulate at the speed of competition and threat evolution. This panel examines what the current regulatory recalibration means for resilience to hybrid threats. If regulatory ambition slows, does this widen a gap between security needs and institutional constraints? The discussion will explore how the European Union’s regulatory frameworks, industry innovation cycles, and security imperatives can be coherently aligned in a context where adversaries may exploit both AI capabilities and decision-making delays. Speakers will assess whether Europe’s regulatory approach strengthens long-term resilience of risks, slowing response and adoption in the face of AI-enabled threats. The focus will be on governance choices that protect democratic values without undermining operational power - including whether alternative mechanisms can supplement regulation to deliver credible hybrid defence.
Closing Remarks by Arnaud Thysen, European Business Summits
Cocktail Reception