Changes from plenary report to adopted text

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

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;

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

Strategic funding and EU financial envelopes

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;

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

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;

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;

Alignment of defence instruments and investment frameworks

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

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;

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;

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;

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;

Governance and subsidiarity in fund management

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;

Reinforcing supply chains

Onshoring and industrial localisation

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

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;

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;

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

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;

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

Diversification and strategic redundancy

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

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

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;

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

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

Workforce, standards and sustainable partnerships

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

a. standardising open architectures and interfaces for interoperability;

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;

Testing facilities and intra-EU training

Testing infrastructure and regulatory simplification

160. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to recognise the importance of testing drones and new technological developments in large open spaces, in order to ensure the safety, efficiency and effectiveness of such innovations; urges the Commission and the Member States to reduce unnecessary red tape and bureaucratic burdens, streamline testing procedures and facilitate the rapid deployment and evaluation of emerging drone technologies;

161. Encourages joint initiatives to ensure rapid access to testing infrastructure by reforming outdated regulatory barriers or outsourcing testing to enable trials in conditions replicating operational environments;

162. Regards regulations on UAS testing requirements in EW, long-range flights and non-standard frequencies as a particular obstacle to qualitative military advantage among Member States’ armed forces and encourages improved accessibility for proven innovators in UAS capabilities to ensure frequent and easy access to testing areas;

Innovation units and AI-enabled training

163. Encourages Member States to support permanent innovation units and training across national security services where commercial technologies are tested in real operational settings and by end users;

164. Calls on the EU Military Staff (EUMS) and EDA to ensure joint training of AI-enabled UAS systems among the Member States and to support the procurement of AI UAS systems so that they can be trained and tested in operationally relevant conditions to perform effectively in real-world scenarios;

Joint ranges, integration and interoperability

165. Encourages Member State cooperation in the joint establishment of NATO Innovation Ranges where armed forces and vendors can engage in year-round testing;

166. Proposes establishing an EU mechanism for integration and interoperability testing between selected unmanned and counter-unmanned systems, including cyber, electronic warfare, and rules of engagement (ROE) scenarios, producing verified integration profiles rather than technical demonstrations;

167. Calls on the Commission to include, within the framework of its Sustainable Investment Facilitation Agreements, the need for the European drone industry and the Member States to secure sufficient reserves of the key materials and components essential for UAS development;

Certifications

168. Calls on the EDA to develop multilingual, standardised operator certification pathways across all Member States;

169. Encourage modular system architectures, so components (e.g. payloads radios and cameras) can be upgraded independently without full platform re-certification;

Standardisation

Technological standards, modularity and digital integration

170. Calls on the EDF to institutionalise in its research and development processes, rapid prototyping, modular design and digital-native C2 as a standard across development models;

171. Calls on the Commission to ensure that future regulations enable a safe, secure and scalable drone integration that focuses on cybersecurity, fail-safe systems and dual-use standardisation;

172. Encourages the adoption of a ‘commercial first’ approach for UAS that prioritises direct acquisition from commercial providers to test new acquisition models that can later be scaled across other capability areas;

173. Calls for dedicated UAS funding to be contingent upon broad mission-aligned categories to enable rapid problem-solving and support commercial innovation;

174. Calls on the EDA to launch a unified digital platform to manage end-to-end collaboration with the commercial sector, enabling real-time communication, proposal tracking and progress monitoring;

Interoperability and operational frameworks

175. Notes the critical importance of rapid detection, attribution and neutralisation capabilities for unmanned systems and calls for a common EU framework for cross-border data sharing, interoperable situational awareness and joint targeting protocols to prevent and respond to incursions; stresses that such cooperation should include common standards for sensors and C2, coordinated procurement where appropriate, and mechanisms for the secure, real-time exchange of telemetry and incident reports to enable coordinated action across the Member States and with European NATO members; stresses the need to establish an EU-wide interoperability standard by mandating open modular standards for C-UAS systems under EDF-funded programmes to ensure ‘plug-and-play’ compatibility and reduce vendor lock-in; notes the importance of standardising operational requirements for Class I–III drones across the EU to enable joint purchases and interoperability based on a capability-focused categorisation that considers operational standards for drones of different operational uses that utilise EW integration and AI-assisted threat detection;