What changed between the draft committee report and the plenary report

Added:126. Encourages developing national defence industries and supporting local public-private partnerships without prejudice to the quality, safety and security requirements applicable to the technology;

Added:127. Encourages the removal of lower entry barriers for non-traditional vendors by removing non-critical security requirements in early testing and fielding to enable SMEs and non-traditional vendors to participate in defence innovation;

Added:Critical drone component manufacturing action plan

Added:128. Calls on the Commission in conjunction with NATO to draft a critical drone component manufacturing action plan that provides targeted subsidies for critical components, especially for brushless direct current motor, lithium battery, sensor and additive manufacturing in the EU; calls for the development and production of essential and emerging technologies and materials within the EU, including optics, communication modules and additive manufacturing; underlines the need to ensure the EU’s resilience and self-sufficiency in drone production, with strict eligibility criteria to ensure the resilience of the supply chain, and to bear in mind the longer-term goal of achieving strategic autonomy by developing indigenous European drone technologies based on EU-essential components, supported by resilient supply chains;

Added:129. Highlights that such an action plan must ensure cooperation with European SMEs;

Added:130. Underlines the need to include microchips, advanced software and cyber-resilience;

Added:Regulatory environment/ESG

Added:Regulatory simplification and harmonisation

Added:131. Stresses the need to remove unnecessary regulatory and administrative burdens, particularly for SMEs, for the drone industry and its suppliers and to establish a European Drone Sovereignty Index to serve as an EU-wide audit tool to assess each platform’s percentage of non-EU dependencies, which can be used to prioritise funding in favour of platforms and programmes with the highest percentage of Member State-based components;

Added:132. Calls for fast-track intra-EU licence derogations to ease internal trade while reinforcing external export controls;

Added:133. Calls for strengthening regulatory and export control harmonisation by:

Added:a. developing pan-EU export licensing and Regulation (EU) 2021/821-compliant component pathways to make European drones more competitive abroad while respecting EU and national export rules to make European drones more competitive abroad;

Added:b. aligning civilian drone regulations (e.g. EASA standards) with military procurement needs to accelerate dual-use innovation;

Added:Industrial autonomy, ESG conditionality and operational efficiency

Added:134. Stresses that the allocation of funds for the development and production of drones and C-UAS should be based exclusively on criteria of efficiency, security, resilience and operational performance;

Added:135. Calls for the prioritisation of spare parts, modular reparability, and rapid engine replacement capabilities in order to ensure that units remain operational under combat conditions; stresses the need for a coherent industrial and supply chain policy that provides European industry with incentives to produce scalable and easily repairable systems, while maintaining adequate stockpiles of critical components; urges the Commission and the Member States to remove procurement bottlenecks that hinder timely production and the fielding of essential defence equipment;

Added:Security of production and overarching EU drone regulation

Added:136. Urges the Commission and the Member States to prioritise the reinforcement and protection of EU weapons firms and European defence industry facilities, in order to mitigate potential hybrid or direct drone threats to their production lines;

Added:137. Calls on the Commission to propose an EU Drones Package, focusing on drone and anti-drone systems and auxiliary capabilities, containing a strategy for using existing instruments to stimulate R&D and localisation of critical supply chains and a regulation on the use of drones in civilian and military contexts that is fit for the present threat scenario;

Added:138. Calls for increased investments focusing on the integration of next-generation digital technologies into drone and anti-drone defence systems to enhance their resilience, scalability and efficiency;

Added:139. Calls for the harmonisation of rules of engagement for offensive UAS employment across the Member States, including export controls and legal frameworks, ensuring full compliance with international humanitarian law;

Added:Working plan for key materials

Added:140. Calls on the Commission to draft a working plan to develop strategic reserves and stockpiles of critical components, including explosives, propellants, primers, carbon frames, electronics, motors, microchips and other key materials for UAS, USV and UUV development, reducing dependencies on third countries and increasing the resilience of the EDTIB;

Added:141. Emphasises that these reserves should be managed with NATO coordination to ensure interoperability and avoid duplication of stockpiles;

Added:142. Stresses the importance of new wire-guidance technology for drones designed to counter interference and EW;

Added:143. Calls on European companies to manufacture these fibre-optic-connected cables within the EU or in a NATO member country in order to avoid opaque technologies and strengthen the security of drone technological components;

Added:EU financial envelopes – the multiannual financial framework (MFF), SAFE, ReArm, etc.

Added:Strategic funding and EU financial envelopes

Added:144. Emphasises the need to ensure, through current instruments and the next MFF, the sustained development of drone-related defence innovation, skills, certification standards, testing and training infrastructure across the Union;

Added:145. Calls for Ukraine’s access to the SAFE mechanism to be used to include investment in developing its UAS capability;

Added:146. Calls for the swift adoption of the Omnibus Defence package presented by the Commission in June 2025, which aims to reduce administrative and bureaucratic burdens (e.g. permitting) and bottlenecks (e.g. access to finance) for defence companies, organisations and Member States, therefore facilitating the development of innovative drone solutions and production;

Added:147. Invites the Commission to make use of funding programmes such as SAFE to highlight the need for EU countries to develop their drone industry, and recommends that the Member States give this need the attention and priority it deserves;

Added:Alignment of defence instruments and investment frameworks

Added:148. Underlines the vitality of C-UAS technological capabilities; calls on the Member States to invest duly in both drone and C-UAS capabilities;

Added:149. Recalls that drone-related investments should be aligned with Union instruments supporting the defence industrial base, including, where relevant, the Critical Raw Materials Act, the European Chips Act, the strategic technologies for Europe platform (STEP) and other frameworks, to ensure that dual-use innovation contributes meaningfully to operational readiness;

Added:150. Calls on the EDA to include specific drone capability goals in the upcoming EU CDP, monitored through CARD and backed by projects under the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) framework;

Added:151. Welcomes the use of SAFE and the Defence Equity Facility to scale production, secure supply chains and support SME participation in the unmanned systems sector;

Added:152. Encourages the Commission to reinforce EDF scoring incentives favouring multinational consortia, shared platforms and high EU origin content; stresses that such measures are vital to consolidate demand, boost resilience and scale up Europe’s autonomous drone capabilities; supports the development of a sovereignty index to measure and incentivise the reduction of dependencies on non-EU sources across the drone value chain;

Added:Governance and subsidiarity in fund management

Added:153. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to involve local and regional administrations in the management of EU defence projects, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity;

Added:Reinforcing supply chains

Added:Onshoring and industrial localisation

Added:154. Encourages the Member States to prioritise onshoring of critical components by:

Added:a. co-financing production facilities in the Member States for brushless DC motors, lithium-ion batteries, semiconductors, and electro-optical sensors through public-private partnerships;

Added:b. offering Member State-backed subsidies and tax incentives for firms willing to localise production within the EU and ensuring that this is coordinated at EU level to ensure maximum efficiency and mitigate distortions of competition in the internal market;

Added:c. leveraging the European Chips Act to prioritise defence applications in the allocation of strategic semiconductor funding;

Added:155. Underlines the need for a cross/EU effort to secure reliable access to critical raw materials, such as lithium, rare-earth magnets and semiconductors, and to invest in high-performance batteries, sensors and secure datalinks;

Added:156. Calls for the expansion of joint security agreements with strategic partners to strengthen supply chain resilience and mutual access to strategic technologies;

Added:Diversification and strategic redundancy

Added:157. Calls for building redundant and diversified supply chains that:

Added:a. encourage dual-sourcing strategies for essential drone components across multiple EU Member States and like-minded partners;

Added:b. support domestic rare-earth extraction and refinement efforts under the Critical Raw Materials Act, while building recycling capacity for lithium, cobalt, and neodymium magnets;

Added:c. establish emergency stockpiles of critical drone components for use during geopolitical supply disruptions;

Added:d. ensure drone production is decentralised across the EU to limit supply-chain risks and enhance security of supply for drones;

Added:Workforce, standards and sustainable partnerships

Added:158. Stresses the need to invest in workforce and manufacturing infrastructure by:

Added:a. standardising open architectures and interfaces for interoperability;

Added:b. mandating open modular standards for all EU-funded drone systems to enable plug-and-play component swaps (e.g. sensors, radios) from multiple suppliers, and

Added:coordinating with NATO to align standards and interoperability needs;

Added:159. Recalls the address made by Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen to Parliament on 8 October 2025, and underlines the strategic scope of developing stronger collaboration between the EU and Greenland in order for European companies to gain access to raw materials in a partnership with the Greenlandic Government based on the use of sustainable practices;