The European Commission and Ukraine signed a new defence industrial partnership on 15 July and simultaneously launched the joint drone initiative EU–Ukraine Drone Deal. In connection with this, the Commission disbursed an additional one billion euros to strengthen Ukraine's drone capability, within the framework of the Ukraine Support Loan support loan of 90 billion euros.
"Our defence industrial partnership integrates Ukraine's defence economy in the same way as we integrate our markets: by removing barriers and harmonising our standards as quickly as possible, from defence procurement to the protection of intellectual property rights," said Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission.
The agreements were signed during von der Leyen's visit to Kyiv on Ukraine's National Day. This is stated in a press release from the European Commission.
The partnership builds on the bilateral drone agreements that Ukraine has already concluded with individual EU countries and is intended to provide a consolidated framework for coordinating these. The EU and Ukraine have agreed to promote joint production of drones and counter-drone systems before the end of 2026. According to the Commission, the cooperation is subsequently to be expanded to joint production of anti-ballistic missiles by 2028 at the latest, in order to address critical capability gaps in air defence.
The drone agreement is designed to combine Ukraine's combat-proven drone expertise with Europe's industrial capacity and manufacturing scale, and is structured around joint ventures between Ukrainian and European companies. A first meeting with the 18 founding members, including Indra Group, Fincantieri, Terma (the Danish aerospace and defence electronics company) and Quantum Systems on the European side, and Skyfall Industries, Deviro and Athlon Avia on the Ukrainian side, is planned in Brussels in September.
Ukraine has furthermore been fully admitted to the European Defence Fund (EDF) and the defence industry programme EDIP (European Defence Industry Programme), which according to the EU enables Ukrainian and European companies to form consortia in EU-funded research and development projects.
The disbursement of one billion euros is the second within the first tranche of six billion euros of the support loan earmarked for drone procurement. The Commission has additionally approved a disbursement plan of ten billion euros to finance further drones, missiles and combat aircraft.
Since Russia's war of aggression began, the EU and its member states have, according to the Commission, contributed a total of 216.7 billion euros in support to Ukraine.