European Parliament calls for a ‘buy-European’ approach to EU defence

On 11 March 2026, the European Parliament adopted a Resolution that tackles barriers in the EU’s single market defence sector. The Resolution warns that current manufacturing capacity, although expanding, remains insufficient to meet Europe’s security needs. 

To address this, the Parliament has called on EU member states to apply a buy-European approach, which prioritises the common procurement and increased production of defense products from the European defence technological and industrial base. To effectively incentivise this shift, the Parliament urged the Council and the Commission to equip EU defence programmes with sufficient funding under the next multiannual financial framework, arguing that robust financing is essential to motivate member states to engage in joint capability development and to encourage defence industries to pursue closer cross-border cooperation.

A central pillar of the proposed reform involves overhauling the legal framework governing defence contracts. The Parliament stated that the implementation of Directive 2009/81/EC on defence and sensitive security procurement needs to be significantly improved and has called on the Commission to propose an ambitious revision. 

While underlining how member states could benefit by using each other’s framework contracts to boost readiness in the short term, the Parliament insisted that long-term procurement should be conducted through common or joint framework contracts based on European criteria.

Furthermore, Members of the European Parliament stressed the need to preserve the integrity of the single market amid rising national defence spending. The Parliament underlined that, in the application of EU competition and State aid rules, the Commission must prioritise the unity and integrity of the single market to avoid distortions of competition. It warned that extensive use of national subsidies risks fragmenting the market and undermining the level playing field, paying particular attention to smaller member states whose fiscal capacities to support their national industries may be limited.

For more information on laws governing defence and defence spending in the EU, contact your CMS client partner or the CMS experts who contributed to this article: Kostadin Sirleshtov, Managing Partner at CMS Sofia, Borislava Piperkova, Partner at CMS Sofia, Antonia Spasova, Head of Defense at CMS Sofia, and Diyan Georgiev, Senior Associate at CMS Sofia.