What changed between the resolution motion joint and the adopted text

30. Calls for the EU to develop a comprehensive EU risk assessment to help identify the major cross-sectoral threats and hazards, as well as the concrete risks facing the EU as a whole, building on current sector-specific risk assessment procedures;

31. Insists on the importance of using the upcoming ‘Preparedness Union Strategy’ to put the EU on track for comprehensive preparedness;

32. Supports a ‘Preparedness by Design’ principle being embedded horizontally and consistently across the EU institutions, bodies and agencies; insists on the need to develop a mandatory ‘security and preparedness check’ for future impact assessments and ‘stress-tests’ for existing legislation; stresses the need to reduce the obstacles in current national and EU legislation that undermine the efficiency of European defence and security;

33. Recommends, in particular, the Niinistö report recommendations aimed at empowering citizens to make societal resilience work, inspired by the Finnish concept of total defence;

34. Invites the Commission and the Member States to explore the feasibility of an EU preparedness act, setting joint standards and long-term guidelines to align EU and national efforts when possible;

35. Calls for the EU and its Member States to establish and regularly conduct an EU comprehensive preparedness exercise to horizontally test both high-level decision-making and operational coordination in order to build strong links between actors and across sectors;

36. Calls for the EU and its Members States to facilitate the use of CSDP instruments in complementarity with internal security tools in the immediate vicinity of the EU’s territory and territorial waters, and to strengthen dual-use and civil-military cooperation at EU level, based on a whole-of-government approach; reiterates its call for the protection of critical underwater infrastructure via the establishment of EU-specific rapid response strategies for underwater infrastructure protection, operating in alignment with NATO; encourages investment in advanced detection and surveillance systems for underwater infrastructure monitoring;

Readiness: the Strategic Compass and the European Defence Industrial Strategy as the right tools

37. Calls for the EU to urgently adapt its tools to new realities by designing an administrative capacity to move much faster through the procedures when faced with wars or other large-scale crises, and to adopt the appropriate tools;

38. Considers regular threat analyses, such as the one first conducted in the Strategic Compass, as an absolute necessity; recommends, therefore, updating the EU’s Strategic Compass and adapting the measures within it accordingly in order to reflect the magnitude of our threat environment, and conducting more frequent threat assessments, as they are a precondition for realistically and successfully planning our capabilities and operations; considers that the Strategic Compass, the CSDP, the white paper and the European Defence Industrial Strategy (EDIS) should form the basis for a comprehensive vision of European defence;

39. Insists that the Rapid Deployment Capacity must achieve full operational capability in 2025 and should be upgraded to be able to face the most extreme military contingencies; reiterates its call to strengthen the EU’s Military Planning and Conduct Capability (MPCC), establishing it as the preferred command and control structure for EU military operations and providing it with adequate premises, staff and effective communication and information systems for all CSDP missions and operations, including those of the Rapid Deployment Capacity;

41. Strongly believes that, in the current geopolitical context, the operationalisation of Article 42(7) of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) on mutual assistance is of utmost importance, ensuring solidarity among Member States, especially those whose geographical position leaves them directly exposed to imminent threats and challenges, regardless of whether they are NATO members;

42. Reiterates the importance of EU-NATO cooperation, as NATO remains, for those states that are members of it, an important pillar of their collective defence; stresses that EU-NATO cooperation should continue, in particular, in areas such as information exchange, planning, military mobility and the exchange of best practice, and to reinforce deterrence, collective defence and interoperability; calls, nonetheless, for the development of a fully capable European pillar of NATO able to act autonomously whenever necessary; reiterates its call to strengthen cooperation – through action, not only words – on military mobility, information exchange, coordination of planning, improved cooperation on their respective military operations and enhanced response to hybrid warfare aimed at destabilising the whole EU continent;

43. Invites the Member States to actively participate in a priority-ordering mechanism for defence production to help prioritise orders, contracts and the recruitment of employees in emergency situations; underlines that the Member States should go beyond their current defence applications to encompass other essential resilience-building infrastructure such as energy, transport and telecommunications;

44. Recognises that the starting point must be a realistic assessment of critical defence capability gaps and shortfalls in order to ramp up defence industry production; underlines the need to ensure the coherence of output between the EU’s Capability Development Plan (CDP) and Coordinated Annual Review on Defence (CARD) and NATO’s capability targets in order to identify and address the critical defence capability gaps and shortfalls in the EU and focus efforts on European strategic enablers to provide genuine EU added value in order to address most extreme military contingencies; calls on the Commission to act on the recommendations of the European Court of Auditor’s Special Report 04/2025 on military mobility and to give greater importance to the military assessment during the selection process for dual-use projects;

45. Urges the EU and its Member States, with regard to armed forces, to move from the ‘flow’ approach that prevailed during peaceful times to a ‘stock’ approach, with a stockpile of defence equipment ready for a sustained increase in demand; notes, in this regard, the advantages offered by mechanisms such as advance purchase agreements, the establishment of ‘ever-warm’ facilities and the creation of defence readiness pools; believes that the Commission should take any actions necessary to encourage the Member States to increase exchanges and build trust among them regarding long-term, transparent planning, more proactive measures aimed at securing raw materials, and policies to close gaps in production processes and on the labour market;

46. Calls for the EU to adopt a global and coherent approach to external aid in all of its dimensions, with much stronger alignment between common foreign and security policy (CFSP) and CSDP objectives and instruments; considers that the strategic environments in which many EU CSDP missions are present are radically deteriorating, which demonstrates the need for the white paper to ensure flexibility in a 360 degree approach to European security that strives towards building a credible and capable deterrence capacity for the Member States, and ensures that Member State civilian and military personnel can deter and respond rapidly to the growing threat environment;

48. Insists on the need to improve the CSDP’s ability to identify, prevent and counter information manipulation aimed at hindering the EU’s external action; reiterates its calls to establish an effective horizontal strategic communications strategy adapted to all EU channels;

49. Calls for the creation of an ‘EU crisis response air fleet’ under the CSDP, comprising military transport aircraft held at EU level and made available to Member States for EU deployments, the transport of equipment or troops (military mobility), or in the event of emergency evacuations – as shown by the capability gap during the withdrawal from Afghanistan – as well as for civil security missions, based on a model similar to the European Air Transport Command;

Coherence and sovereignty

Coherence

50. Expects the European External Action Service (EEAS) to carry out comprehensive and uncompromising reviews of CSDP missions and operations, taking into account, in particular, the feasibility of their respective mandates in relation to the resources allocated, the staff recruitment method for missions and operations, especially on the link between the skills required and the different profiles, as well as the rationalisation of resources and the management of missions and operations, transparency in calls for tender, activities and results obtained, lessons learnt from best practice and difficulties encountered; asks the Council, on the basis of these reviews, to take decisions aimed at adapting or abandoning ineffective missions and strengthening the most useful missions; believes that the governance of evaluation and the control of CSDP missions and operations must be improved;

51. Believes that the EU should develop wartime economic cooperation contingency plans with close partners to ensure mutual support in the case of large-scale security crises involving them directly, and should deepen wartime economic dialogues with European and global partners to provide early warning of hard, hybrid and cyber threats, and foster mutual support planning, the protection of critical infrastructure and maritime safety;

52. Calls for the EU to further accelerate the implementation of military mobility; believes that the EU has to move from ‘mobility’ to ‘military logistics’; stresses the need for significant investment in military mobility infrastructure to enhance cargo airlift capabilities, camps, fuel infrastructure through depots, ports, air, sea and rail transport platforms, railway lines, waterways, roads, bridges and logistic hubs; stresses that this must be done in cooperation with NATO by drafting a strategic plan for developing mobility; calls for the rapid implementation of the technical arrangement signed under the aegis of the European Defence Agency Cross-Border Movement Permission, the harmonisation of customs formalities and the preparation of a centralised and justified lifting of road and rail traffic standards in the event of a crisis situation;

53. Believes that, in order to create a favourable ecosystem for the European defence industry, the EU must decide on a united and clear long-term vision for the European defence industry in order to provide visibility to the industry and ensure that priority needs are addressed;

62. Proposes that relevant defence-related entities/activities be allowed access to InvestEU and other EU funds, taking advantage of EU defence as a job creator; insists that defence-related entities/activities be prioritised as appropriate, with the support of the Chips Act and the Critical Raw Materials Act; believes that the simplification efforts announced by the Commission must fully encompass the defence sector; calls on the Commission to leverage the full dual-use potential of space technologies, considering space as both a new operating domain and a critical enabler of multi-domain operations; underlines that the EU currently has a substantial gap in space capabilities compared to its main competitors and stresses that, in order to address this gap in space technologies, already existing flagship projects (i.e. Copernicus and Galileo) should be enhanced for defence applications; suggests, furthermore, that the EU should urgently pursue the development of its IRIS2 constellation, together with the development of further EU common projects, for example, for space domain awareness and space-based missile early-warning applications;

63. Insists on the need to ensure geographical coherence by taking stock of the will of the EU and the UK, first and foremost to build security guarantees for Ukraine and become closer security partners, and to sign a joint declaration with concrete engagements and structured dialogue in order to strengthen EU-UK cooperation on the full range of foreign and security challenges facing the continent, the budgetary and regulatory conditions of which remain to be negotiated, and keeping in mind the importance of the decision-making autonomy of the EU; underlines, in this regard, the importance of closer cooperation on information and intelligence sharing, military mobility, security and defence initiatives, crisis management, cyber defence, hybrid threats, foreign information manipulation and interference and in jointly addressing shared threats;

64. Calls for more coherence in support of companies by reducing unnecessary administrative burdens and cutting red tape, and ensuring much easier access for small- and mid-cap companies within the defence sector; underlines the need to review, simplify and harmonise the current framework for export licences and intra-EU transfer licences, as well as for cross-certification of equipment, as one of the priorities to foster better cooperation within the market and among Member States;

65. Encourages a common European certification scheme for weapons systems and a move beyond the current system of national certification in order to speed up the introduction of weapons systems into the armed forces of Member States;

66. Calls for greater coherence in governance as CSDP must become the key instrument of a powerful Europe; considers that this requires a real link in governance between the Member States, the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (VP/HR) and the Commissioners; urges the Member States to overcome the complexity of decision-making processes in the governance of European defence; calls for the creation of a council of defence ministers and for the move from unanimity to qualified majority voting for decisions in the European Council, the Council of Ministers and EU agencies such as the EDA, excluding military operations with an executive mandate; calls, in the meantime, for the use of Article 44 TEU in the creation of a horizontal task force on defence in the Commission; calls for increased democratic accountability through enhanced oversight by Parliament;

67. Proposes the strengthening of Parliament’s oversight and scrutiny role, in line with the expansion of the EU’s role in defence; calls for the appointment of a Parliament representative to the new Defence Industrial Readiness Board proposed in EDIP, as there is currently none provided for;

Sovereignty

68. Stresses that the creation of a single European defence market is a priority, as the fragmentation and lack of competitiveness of the European industry have so far hampered the capacity of the EU to assume more responsibility as a security provider; recalls that the concept of a ‘defence market’ implies a full recognition of its specificity and an appropriate and coherent application of EU public policies; recalls that European preference should be the aim of achieving this single ‘market’ by strictly linking territoriality and the added value generated in this territory;

72. Calls on the Commission to design a better-resourced, more strategic and more efficient successor to the European Defence Fund that supports common research and innovation in defence all along the supply chain and to lay the conditions to address technological challenges: advanced persistent threats, artificial intelligence and machine learning, quantum computing, the internet of military things, security, supply chain attacks, zero-day exploits and cloud security; calls for the establishment of an EU agency, inspired by the US’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, as part of the European Defence Agency, which should be solely responsible for supporting research in emerging and disruptive technologies, equipped with an adequate amount of venture capital;

Finance and investments

73. Is concerned that, without a substantial increase in defence investment, the EU’s security and defence objectives will not be reached, both in terms of military support for Ukraine and the improvement of our common security; highlights the fact that the cost of non-preparedness for the most extreme military contingencies would be much higher than the cost of decisive EU preparedness; calls for the EU and its Member States to work and agree on concrete ways and means to achieve a short- to long-term substantial increase in public and private investment in defence and security;

74. Considers that, in the EU’s next multiannual financial framework (MFF), defence spending lines will have to reflect the new ‘ready for the most extreme military contingencies’ priority;

75. Insists that urgent needs cannot wait for the next MFF; insists that innovative solutions for finding additional funding must be explored without delay, such as investing in the defence sector, making it easier and faster to repurpose funds from one project to another, and exploring the possibility of adjusting EU funding criteria to give new prominence to security criteria in allocating spending;

76. Welcomes the five-point ‘ReArm Europe’ plan proposed by the Commission President on 4 March 2025;