Arming Europe: Cross-Border M&A and the Making of a Continental Defence Industry

1. A Continent Rearms

Europe’s defence industry is undergoing the most consequential restructuring since the end of the Cold War. Russia’s war against Ukraine, the deteriorating security situation in the Middle East, and a US administration openly questioning the durability of its security guarantees to Europe have combined to produce a demand surge for defence output that few observers would have predicted even a few years ago. For lawyers advising on cross-border transactions, the practical consequence is unmistakable: defence and security has moved from a niche, heavily regulated corner of the M&A market to one of its most active fields, drawing private equity houses, sovereign wealth funds and industrial conglomerates that would once have avoided the sector altogether.

The headline commitment came at the NATO summit in The Hague in June 2025, where all 32 allies (with a carve-out negotiated by Spain) agreed to raise defence and security-related spending to 5% of GDP by 2035 – 3.5% on core defence requirements and 1.5% on broader security-related investments such as infrastructure, cyber resilience and industrial capacity.¹ This represents more than a doubling of the 2% benchmark that had governed allied burden-sharing since 2014, and reflects both a genuine reassessment of the Russian threat and sustained pressure from the Trump administration for European and Canadian allies to fund a much larger share of their own defence.

The European Union has responded with initiatives that go well beyond declaratory politics. The Commission’s White Paper for European Defence – Readiness 2030, published in March 2025, and the subsequent Defence Readiness Omnibus of June 2025, sketch out an ambitious defence-industrial policy: pooled procurement, faster and cheaper access to funding, and a deliberate loosening of state aid and competition constraints historically viewed as obstacles to consolidation. The centrepiece financing instrument, Security Action for Europe (SAFE), came into force on 29 May 2025 and allows the European Commission to borrow up to €150 billion on capital markets and on-lend it to participating member states for joint defence procurement, provided at least 65% of the value of funded components originates in the EU, EFTA or Ukraine.²

This is not merely a story about Brussels and Berlin. It is, increasingly, a European story with a distinctly transatlantic and cross-Channel dimension, and one in which London occupies an unusually delicate position, simultaneously indispensable to European defence-industrial capacity and formally outside the club now directing the largest wave of European defence spending in a generation.

This article examines the structural features of the sector, the evolving European regulatory architecture, and the specific position of the United Kingdom and other non-EU allies, before setting out practical guidance for parties structuring cross-border defence transactions.

2. A Fragmented Industry Meets an Unprecedented Order Book

Europe’s defence-industrial base remains strikingly fragmented relative to the scale of demand which it is now facing. Twenty-seven national procurement authorities, each with its own doctrine, budget cycle and industrial policy preferences, have produced a landscape in which the EU operates around 150 distinct major weapon systems, compared with roughly a sixth of that number in the United States.³ That fragmentation shows up starkly in the league tables: of the world’s fifteen largest arms-producing companies by 2024 revenue, only four are European. BAE Systems of the United Kingdom is the highest-placed European company, in fourth position globally, with Leonardo of Italy the next European entrant ranking twelfth. Rheinmetall, the largest German producer, ranked twentieth worldwide in 2024 despite arms revenue growth of roughly 47% year-on-year to around $8.2 billion, a striking rate that nonetheless leaves it far smaller than the three leading US primes, Lockheed Martin, RTX and Northrop Grumman.⁴

The consequence of this fragmentation is chronic under-realisation of scale economies: duplicated development programmes, shorter production runs, and a structural cost disadvantage relative to US and increasingly Chinese competitors. It is precisely this diagnosis that underlies the current wave of consolidation. Since 2025, M&A dealmaking has accelerated sharply. Rheinmetall completed its acquisition of Naval Vessels Lürssen on 1 March 2026, creating what the company describes as a cross-domain system house spanning land, sea, air and space;⁵ Leonardo completed its acquisition of Iveco Group’s defence vehicles business on 18 March 2026, closing a long-standing capability gap in armoured platforms;⁶ and the Franco-German group KNDS absorbed Texelis Defense and increased its stake in the German gearbox manufacturer RENK Group. Discussions about a possible satellite-sector combination involving Leonardo, Airbus and Thales, dubbed Project Bromo, illustrate both the ambition and the political sensitivity of the consolidation now under way. European defence M&A deal value rose to $8.7 billion across 134 transactions in 2025, a 320% increase year-on-year,⁷ and global defence M&A deal volume climbed a further 56% in the first half of 2026, even as aggregate values held broadly stable, reflecting a market now characterised by high transaction frequency rather than a handful of very large deals.⁸

A further structural feature deserves emphasis: at the level of prime contractors and lead system integrators, the state is in many cases the only customer. Order backlogs and the durability of framework agreements, rather than conventional trading multiples, tend to drive valuation. Buyers must therefore scrutinise the quality and renewal probability of government contracts with particular care, alongside the transferability of the web of manufacturing licences, export authorisations and security accreditations without which a defence business cannot operate.

3. The United Kingdom: Indispensable Partner, Uncertain Insider

No jurisdiction illustrates the tension between European defence integration and continued national sovereignty more clearly than the United Kingdom. British industry remains one of Europe’s genuine defence-industrial powerhouses – BAE Systems alone outranks every other European producer – and UK-headquartered companies are deeply embedded in continental supply chains. Yet the UK sits outside the EU’s institutional architecture, and its exact place within the EU’s new financing and procurement structures is still being negotiated. Alongside its EU-facing efforts, the UK has also pursued closer bilateral defence-industrial cooperation with France: at the 37th Franco-British summit in London on 10 July 2025, President Macron and Prime Minister Starmer signed the “Lancaster House 2.0” declaration, modernising the 2010 Lancaster House Treaties and establishing an “Entente Industrielle” intended to deepen joint development of complex weapons systems, including a successor to the Storm Shadow/SCALP cruise missile, alongside expanded cooperation in space, cyber and nuclear deterrence. This bilateral track, sitting outside the EU framework altogether, offers UK and French defence companies an additional avenue for industrial cooperation regardless of the outcome of the UK’s negotiations with Brussels.⁹

At the UK-EU summit of 19 May 2025, the two sides signed a Security and Defence Partnership committing to explore swiftly the possibilities for UK participation in SAFE. From the outset, SAFE’s design allowed third countries with a Security and Defence Partnership to participate in joint procurements,¹⁰ and the Commission indicated it hoped a UK arrangement could be concluded within weeks. That optimism proved premature. Negotiations broke down in November 2025 over the scale of the financial contribution the EU expected London to pay for access, with reporting suggesting the EU sought a contribution in the billions of euros against a UK offer in the low hundreds of millions; France, protective of its own industrial base, was notably resistant to generous UK terms. As matters stand, the UK has not concluded a bespoke SAFE association agreement, though UK defence companies continue to have access to SAFE-funded procurements under the generic third-country terms available to any non-EU, non-EEA supplier, which cap non-EU content at 35% of a project’s value absent a specific bilateral agreement. By contrast, Canada, which has no land border with the EU and a materially different industrial relationship with Brussels, concluded its own SAFE association agreement in December 2025, becoming the first non-European country admitted to the scheme¹¹ – a comparison that has not gone unnoticed in London or Brussels.

For M&A practitioners, this unresolved relationship has immediate practical consequences. A UK target’s ability to participate competitively in SAFE-funded procurement, and the terms on which it may do so, are live commercial diligence items that can materially affect valuation, particularly for suppliers of platforms or components with a high European content requirement. Equally, UK acquirers of EU targets, and EU acquirers of UK targets, must navigate two separate foreign investment regimes in parallel: the German AWV (Außenwirtschaftsverordnung)-based FDI screening regime and its counterparts across the EU (25 of the 27 member states now operate a national screening mechanism, with the Commission retaining a coordinating role under Article 8 of the EU FDI Screening Regulation)¹² on one side of the Channel, and the UK’s National Security and Investment Act 2021 (NSIA) on the other. The NSIA regime has become markedly more active: the government’s most recent annual report recorded 1,324 notifications in the 2025-26 reporting period, up from 1,143 the year before, with the defence sector again the largest category, accounting for 58% of all notifications and 47% of the 60 call-in notices issued. Nine final orders were made in the period, eight imposing conditions and one prohibiting the transaction outright, though only two of the nine concerned the defence sector specifically (down from a larger share in the prior period), with advanced materials and data infrastructure accounting for most 2025-26 final orders. The comparison nonetheless illustrates a broader trend: notification volumes in both the UK and continental FDI regimes continue to rise, even as the proportion of transactions subject to binding intervention remains modest.¹³

4. The EU’s Regulatory Recalibration: Competition, State Aid and Sustainable Finance

The Defence Readiness Omnibus of June 2025 is best understood as an attempt to align competition and sustainability regulation with the EU’s industrial ambitions for the sector, without abandoning the underlying legal standards. Three strands are of particular relevance to dealmakers operating across borders.

First, merger control. The Commission has signalled that it will give materially greater weight to efficiency gains and the contribution of a transaction to European defence and security capability when assessing concentrations in the sector, a shift now being embedded in the broader revision of the EU’s merger guidelines. On 30 April 2026 the Commission published draft revised Merger Guidelines, the first comprehensive rewrite of the 2004 Horizontal and 2008 Non-Horizontal Guidelines in two decades, following the recommendations of the 2024 Draghi report on European competitiveness.¹⁴ The draft guidelines explicitly recognise that transactions increasing the scale, resilience and competitiveness of European industry, including in defence, can be viewed favourably, and introduce a more permissive framework for assessing merger-specific efficiencies, while maintaining the underlying significant impediment to effective competition test. A final text is expected later in 2026, but its principles are already shaping the Commission’s approach to pending cases. Separately, the Commission has confirmed that member states may rely on Article 346(1)(b) TFEU to exclude the purely military elements of a transaction from EU merger review altogether, confining the Commission’s jurisdiction to any non-military component.¹⁵

Second, cooperation agreements. The Commission has indicated greater tolerance under Article 101 TFEU for horizontal cooperation between defence companies – joint procurement, joint production and capacity-pooling arrangements – where these are necessary to meet capability requirements that no single company could satisfy alone.¹⁶ This materially widens the scope for structuring joint ventures and consortium arrangements of the kind already seen in KNDS’s Franco-German tank programmes and Leonardo’s joint ventures with Rheinmetall and BAE Systems.

Third, state aid and sustainable finance. The Commission has confirmed that state aid supporting investment in defence production will typically qualify for the essential security interests exemption under Article 346 TFEU and therefore fall outside the ordinary notification regime, reducing the clawback risk that has historically deterred state-backed defence transactions.¹⁷ On the sustainable finance side, a Commission Notice of 30 December 2025 clarifies that the EU sustainable finance framework, including the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR), the EU Taxonomy and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), does not prevent or limit financing of the defence sector, and recognises defence investment as a contributor to the European Union’s resilience and social sustainability, to be assessed case by case rather than excluded on a sector-wide basis.¹⁸ In parallel, amendments to the EU’s Paris-Aligned Benchmarks and Climate Transition Benchmarks Regulation, adopted at the end of 2025, replaced the concept of controversial weapons with the narrower and more precisely defined category of prohibited weapons (limited to anti-personnel mines, cluster munitions, and biological and chemical weapons), giving institutional investors and lenders considerably greater clarity as to which defence exposures fall within restrictive sustainable-finance regimes. A parallel reform of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, adopted in 2026, has narrowed mandatory reporting to companies with net turnover above €450 million and more than 1,000 employees, while expressly permitting defence companies a wider margin of discretion to withhold classified or commercially sensitive information from sustainability disclosures – a change of direct relevance to due diligence and post-merger integration.¹⁹

5. Financing the Rearmament: SAFE, EDF and the Wider Toolkit

Beyond SAFE, the Commission amended the legal bases of several EU investment programmes in December 2025 to channel further resources towards defence. The European Defence Fund’s application process was simplified, its evaluation criteria streamlined, and parallel funding from other EU programmes such as InvestEU was permitted for the first time. The STEP platform (Strategic Technologies for Europe) was expanded to prioritise defence technologies.²⁰ Separately, the European Defence Industry Programme, adopted on 17 December 2025 and in force by the end of that year with a budget of €1.5 billion for 2025-2027 (of which €300 million is earmarked for a Ukraine Support Instrument), is intended to build shared production capacity across member states, subject to a rule that at least 65% of funded component costs must originate in the EU or associated countries.²¹ National fiscal space has also been widened: Germany and eleven other member states have activated the national escape clause under the EU’s Stability and Growth Pact, permitting additional defence expenditure of up to 1.5% of GDP outside ordinary budgetary constraints, which the Commission estimates could mobilise a further €650 billion for the European defence market.²²

For acquirers of defence-related businesses, this expanding funding architecture has a direct valuation effect. Targets that qualify as suppliers to SAFE-financed joint procurements, or whose research and development can draw on EDF funding, benefit from materially more visible and durable revenue streams than has historically been typical in the sector – and the “Buy European” content requirements embedded in SAFE create a further commercial incentive for acquirers to build sufficient European value-add into their supply chains through targeted acquisitions, including of UK and other third-country suppliers willing to relocate or expand production within the EU or EFTA. For UK targets and their acquirers in particular, this dynamic is best read together with the unresolved question of UK-SAFE association addressed in Section 3 above: absent a bespoke agreement, the 35% cap on non-EU/EFTA/Ukraine content means that relocating or expanding EU or EFTA production is, for now, the most direct route by which a UK-linked supply chain can exceed that ceiling and compete on equal terms for SAFE-funded work. A future UK-EU association agreement, of the kind already reached with Norway, Japan and Canada, could in principle reclassify UK-based content itself as qualifying, making relocation unnecessary; until then, however, that prospect should be factored into valuation and deal structure from the outset – for example through earn-outs or conditionality tied to relocation milestones – rather than treated as a contingency to be revisited only once an agreement is concluded.

6. Procurement Law: A Cautious Liberalisation

On the procurement side, the Commission’s proposal to revise the 2009 Defence and Security Procurement Directive would raise the thresholds triggering the directive’s application from €432,000 to €900,000 for supply and service contracts and from €5.4 million to €7 million for works contracts, extend the maximum duration of framework agreements from seven to ten years, and integrate the innovation partnership procedure into the defence procurement toolkit. In its negotiating position of 26 November 2025, the Council proposed going considerably further still, suggesting thresholds of €3 million for supply and service contracts and €15 million for works contracts. Political agreement between the Council and the European Parliament on this package was reached in trilogue in June 2026, with formal adoption by both institutions expected in the second half of 2026 and implementation by member states anticipated in 2027-2028.²³ This is a change of particular relevance to SMEs and technology-focused suppliers whose contracts fall below the new thresholds, and whose attractiveness as acquisition targets is correspondingly enhanced. This simplification package should be distinguished from a separate, more fundamental recast of the Defence and Security Procurement Directive (2009/81/EC) as a whole, which the Commission has announced it will propose in the third quarter of 2026; given the scale of that undertaking, the revised directive is unlikely to enter into force before 2027 or 2028.²⁴

A related and, for M&A purposes, more consequential development is the EU’s drive towards collaborative procurement. Collaborative defence expenditure reached 24% of EU equipment procurement in 2025,²⁵ up from 18% in 2022,²⁶ though still short of the Commission’s 40% target by 2027.²⁷ Companies positioned as suppliers across several national procurement programmes stand to benefit from structural competitive advantages and correspondingly higher acquisition values, while target companies whose contracts were awarded through a public procurement procedure require careful diligence: the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) held in Pressetext that a genuine change of contracting party, as is typical of an asset deal outside a group, generally constitutes a material modification requiring a fresh tender, whereas an internal reorganisation transferring the contract to a wholly owned subsidiary of the original contractor does not, of itself, alter the contract’s essential terms.²⁸ By analogy, a share deal, in which the contracting entity itself remains unchanged, is generally treated by German courts and commentators as procurement-neutral, save in cases of abusive structuring or where the incoming shareholder fails to meet qualification requirements.²⁹

7. Practical Guidance for Cross-Border M&A Transactions

Several recurring themes should inform the structuring of any pan-European or UK-related defence transaction.

Map every applicable screening regime from the outset. A transaction with EU, UK and third-country dimensions may trigger German FDI screening under the AWV (Außenwirtschaftsverordnung)-regime, equivalent regimes in other member states, the Commission’s coordination role under the EU FDI Screening Regulation, and the UK’s NSIA simultaneously, each with its own thresholds, timelines and standard of review. Given the volume of parallel merger control and foreign investment filings now typical in European defence deals, illustrated by the Rheinmetall/NVL and KNDS/Texelis clearances, timetables should build in adequate headroom for coordinated, rather than sequential, engagement with regulators.

Engage regulators early and transparently. Pre-notification engagement with the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie – BMWE), the UK’s Investment Security Unit and equivalent bodies elsewhere in Europe measurably shortens review periods and helps identify likely conditions, such as ring-fencing of sensitive technology or information barriers vis-à-vis a parent company, before they are imposed unilaterally.

Treat SAFE and EDF eligibility as a genuine value driver. Acquirers should assess at the outset whether a target’s components meet the 65% European value-add threshold under SAFE, whether the target can plausibly qualify for EDF-funded research, and whether post-completion restructuring, for example relocating development activity into the EU or EFTA, could materially improve funding access and, in turn, valuation.

Do not assume UK-EU defence integration is settled. The collapse of the SAFE negotiations in late 2025 demonstrates that political commitments to closer UK-EU defence cooperation have not yet translated into a stable legal framework. Transaction planning should treat UK content restrictions, and the possibility of a future UK-EU agreement altering them, as a live commercial risk rather than a settled fact, and should monitor parallel bilateral tracks such as the UK-France Lancaster House arrangements as an alternative route to closer industrial cooperation.

Choose transaction structure deliberately, not by default. The choice between an asset deal and a share deal in this sector carries procurement, export control and security clearance consequences that go well beyond the tax analysis that typically dominates the decision in other industries.

Position ESG and sustainable finance considerations proactively. The Commission’s clarifications on the sustainability compatibility of defence investment, and the narrower definition of prohibited weapons under the revised Paris-Aligned and Climate Transition Benchmarks Regulation, give acquirers a genuine basis on which to engage ESG-conscious investors and lenders who might otherwise have been reluctant to finance the sector.

8. Conclusion

Europe’s defence sector is being reshaped by a combination of geopolitical necessity, an unprecedented mobilisation of public capital, and a deliberate loosening of the competition, state aid and sustainability constraints that once made consolidation in this industry unusually difficult. The result is a transaction environment more dynamic than at any point in decades, with major consolidation among Europe’s prime contractors, a rapidly expanding funding architecture, and a Commission increasingly willing to treat scale and resilience as legitimate objectives of merger policy in their own right.

Yet this is not a story of straightforward liberalisation. The unresolved question of UK participation in the EU’s flagship financing instrument, the parallel and still-diverging foreign investment regimes operated by the EU and the UK, and the residual complexity of procurement, export control and security clearance requirements mean that defence M&A remains one of the most demanding fields in which to advise. For acquirers and their counsel prepared to navigate that complexity with genuinely cross-jurisdictional expertise, the current environment offers a rare industrial necessity, and, with it, an unusually favourable window for building lasting pan-European defence-industrial champions.

Sources

1. NATO, The Hague Summit Declaration, 25 June 2025, para. 3, available at: https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_236705.htm; Bundesregierung, NATO-Gipfel in Den Haag 2025, 24 June 2025, available at: https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/aktuelles/nato-gipfel-den-haag-2025-2355974.

2. European Commission and High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Joint White Paper for European Defence – Readiness 2030, 19 March 2025, JOIN(2025) 120 final; Regulation (EU) 2025/1106 establishing the Security Action for Europe (SAFE) instrument, OJ L, 2025/1106; Council of the EU, Press release, SAFE: Council adopts EUR 150 billion boost for joint procurement on European Security and defence, 27 May 2025.

3. Tagesschau, Europäische Rüstungspolitik. Klein-Klein statt Feuerkraft, available at: https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/eu-ruestungspolitik-100.html.

4. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), The SIPRI Top 100 Arms-Producing and Military Services Companies, 2024, 1 December 2025, available at: https://www.sipri.org/visualizations/2025/sipri-top-100-arms-producing-and-military-services-companies-world-2024; combined 2024 arms revenues of Lockheed Martin (USD 64.65bn), RTX (USD 43.60bn) and Northrop Grumman (USD 37.85bn) per the same source.

5. Rheinmetall AG, press release, Rheinmetall takes over NVL – Closing completed, 2 March 2026.

6. Leonardo, press release, Leonardo completes the acquisition of Iveco Group’s defence business, 18 March 2026.

7. Airforce Technology, Aerospace and defense M&A activity: strategic positioning amid robust growth, 27 April 2026, available at: https://www.verdict.co.uk/aerospace-and-defense-ma-activity-strategic-positioning-amid-robust-growth/.

8. DPRTE, Global Defence M&A Hits Record High, 16 July 2026 (available at: https://www.dprte.co.uk/2026/07/16/global-defence-ma-hits-record-high/) and European Security & Defence, Global defence M&A reaches half-year record as investors race to secure next-generation technologies, 15 July 2026 (available at: https://euro-sd.com/2026/07/news/exclusive-news/52343/global-defence-ma-reaches-half-year-record-as-investors-race-to-secure-next-generation-technologies/) (global defence M&A: 42 transactions in H1 2026, up from 27 in H1 2025, aggregate value broadly stable at approx. GBP 2.7bn versus GBP 2.8bn in H1 2025); cf. also CMS, European M&A Outlook 2026, Fortress Europe – defence sector M&A; Bain & Company, M&A in Defense: Why All Eyes Are on Europe, 2026 M&A Report; A&O Shearman, Rising geopolitical tensions ignite European defense M&A, 2025.

9. UK Government, press release, Lancaster House 2.0: Declaration on Modernising UK-French Defence and Security Cooperation, 10 July 2025, available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/lancaster-house-20-declaration-on-modernising-uk-french-defence-and-security-cooperation; Élysée, Lancaster House 2.0: Déclaration sur la modernisation de la coopération de défense et de sécurité entre la France et le Royaume-Uni, 14 July 2025.

10. UK Government and European Union, UK-EU Security and Defence Partnership, 19 May 2025, available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-eu-security-and-defence-partnership; UK in a Changing Europe, Explainer: Security Action for Europe (SAFE), available at: https://ukandeu.ac.uk/explainers/explainer-security-action-for-europe-safe/.

11. House of Commons Defence Committee, The UK contribution to European Security: Government Response, p. 5, confirming UK access to SAFE under standard third-country terms with UK content capped at 35%; Chatham House, The UK will not join the EU’s new defence fund. Can the UK–EU security reset still succeed?, December 2025; UK in a Changing Europe, After SAFE: Consequences for EU-UK defence industrial cooperation and potential ways forward; Council of the EU, press release, SAFE: member states endorse agreement on the participation of Canada, 19 December 2025.

12. Article 8 of Regulation (EU) 2019/452, OJ 2019 L 079I, 1.

13. UK Government, National Security and Investment Act 2021: Annual Report 2025-26; Dechert LLP, Insights from the Latest UK National Security and Investment Act Report, 17 July 2026; GOV.UK, Investment screening powers protect national security and support growth, press release, 14 July 2026.

14. European Commission, Draft Guidelines on the assessment of concentrations, published for consultation 30 April 2026; Cleary Gottlieb, EC Announces Wide-Ranging Reform of Merger Guidelines, 30 April 2026; Mario Draghi, The Future of European Competitiveness, September 2024.

15. Commission, Communication to the European Parliament and the Council, Defence Readiness Omnibus package, 17 June 2025, COM(2025) 820 final, p. 11 et seq.; Article 346(1)(b) TFEU.

16. Commission, COM(2025) 820 final, p. 12.

17. Commission, COM(2025) 820 final, pp. 13-14; Article 346 TFEU.

18. Commission Notice on the application of the sustainable finance framework and corporate sustainability due diligence to the defence sector, C(2025) 3800, published in OJ C, C/2025/4950, 30.12.2025.

19. Delegated Regulation (EU) 2020/1818 (PAB/CTB), OJ 2020 L 406, 17, as amended (end of 2025); Directive (EU) 2026/470, OJ L, 2026/470, recital 14.

20. Articles 1-5 of Regulation (EU) 2025/2653, OJ L, 2025/2653 (amending, inter alia, Regulations (EU) 2021/695, (EU) 2021/697 and (EU) 2024/795 as regards incentivising defence-related investment in the EU budget).

21. Regulation (EU) 2025/2643 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 December 2025 establishing the European Defence Industry Programme (EDIP); European Parliament, press release, Parliament greenlights first-ever European Defence Industry Programme, 25 November 2025; Council of the EU, press release, European Defence Industry Programme: Council gives final approval, 8 December 2025.

22. Commission, press release, Twelve Member States apply to activate the national escape clause in a coordinated action to boost defence spending, 30 April 2025, available at: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_1121.

23. Wolf Theiss, EU defence procurement reform – key developments for upcoming defence and security tenders, 2026, available at: https://www.wolftheiss.com/insights/eu-defence-procurement-reform-key-developments-for-upcoming-defence-and-security-tenders/; INSIGHT EU Monitoring, Defence Omnibus: EU lawmakers agree provisional deal to speed up procurement, 10 June 2026, available at: https://ieu-monitoring.com/editorial/defence-omnibus-eu-lawmakers-agree-provisional-deal-to-speed-up-procurement/1243085.

24. Wolf Theiss, ibid.

25. European Defence Agency, Defence Data 2025-2026, published September 2026, available at: https://eda.europa.eu/docs/default-source/eda-publications/2026-eda_defencedata_webpublic.pdf.

26. European Parliament, Briefing of 12 March 2026, available at: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2026/785665/EPRS_BRI(2026)785665_EN.pdf.

27. Commission, JOIN(2025) 120 final, p. 26.

28. Case C-454/06 (Pressetext Nachrichtenagentur), Judgment of 19 June 2008, ECLI:EU:C:2008:351, paras. 40-49, in particular paras. 44-45 and 47.

29. Higher Regional Court of Naumburg (Oberlandesgericht Naumburg), decision of 29.4.2010 – 1 Verg 3/10, NZBau 2010, 784; Greb/Stenzel, NZBau 2012, 404 (406); Müller, VergabeR 2015, 652 (656); Munich Commentary on Competition Law/Jaeger, GWB § 132 para. 53 with further references.