Europe pulls sectors of civil, defence and space industries together to spur innovation

The European Commission presented its action plan on synergies between civil, defence and space industries to further enhance Europe's technological edge and support its industrial base.

The Action Plan aims to exploit the disruptive potential of technologies at the interface between defence, space and civil uses, such as cloud, processors, cyber, quantum and artificial intelligence.  

"With the European Defence Fund we have a strong potential for synergies between innovation in space, defence and civil research & innovation,” said A Europe fit for the Digital Age Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager. “We need this for a number of critical technologies. The idea is for innovations to systematically reach multiple uses by design. And to tap into the huge innovation potential of researchers and start-ups."

Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton said: "Making the most of the European Defence Fund and ensuring strong synergies between defence, space and civil technologies will generate disruptive innovations and allow Europe to remain a global standard setter. It will also reduce our dependencies in critical technologies and boost the industrial leadership we need to recover from the crisis."

Spin-offs and spin-ins

The main goals of the Action Plan are to develop synergies between different EU programmes, explore the possibility for spin-offs from high-end research for Europe’s citizens and to explore the use of civil industry to ‘spin-in’ to European defence projects.

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