The European Defence Industry Programme is an initiative of the European Union aiming at developing the EU defense industry by providing for the period 2025-2027 (until the next Multiannual Financial Framework) â¬1.5 billion in the form of grants to the European Defense industry. The Commission announced the creation of EDIP in March 2024, when it also presented a new European Defence Industrial Strategy. It is part of the Readiness 2030 strategy and defines joint procurement for the defense industry. EDIP also builds upon the European Defence Industry Reinforcement through the common Procurement Act (EDIRPA) which allocated â¬300 million to Member States joint acquisitions of military equipment , in order to support common purchasing of defence products. EDIRPA funding required the minimum involvement of three Member States and the programme was operational until 31 December 2025.
The EDIP regulation was negotiated by the co-legislators, with the Committees of the European Parliament in charge of these issues pushing for increasing EDIP's budget to 21 billion euro. It passed through European Council under qualified majority. On 8 December 2025, the European Council adopted the EDIP regulation, which will enter into force in the last weeks of 2025.
The implementation of EDIP introduces specific benchmarks for the European defense sector. According to a report by the ÃÂcole Militaire, the programme aims to shift the procurement patterns of member states, targeting a minimum of 50% of military equipment purchases from within the Union by 2030. This objective follows data indicating that between 2022 and 2023, 68% of EU defense acquisitions were sourced from the United States, while joint investments among the 27 member states accounted for 18%.
The programme's framework is tied to the current disparity in industrial output between the EU and other global actors. While the Union remains a primary financial contributor to Ukraine, internal reports from April 2024 noted a gap in ammunition logistics; specifically, only 30% of the promised one million shells were delivered within the initial timeframe. For comparison, NATO intelligence estimated Russian production at approximately 3 million shells in 2023, whereas combined production from the EU and NATO reached 1.2 million units during the same period. To address these logistical gaps, EDIP coordinates production between large-scale manufacturers and small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) through grants and facilitated financing.