EU races to seal defence industry omnibus

European Union negotiators met in Brussels on Tuesday to try to close a deal on a package meant to speed up arms production by cutting permitting delays and simplifying access to EU funding, according to Euronews. The so-called “Defence Readiness Omnibus” has been in the works for about a year and is being hammered out between the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Cypriot presidency of the EU Council.

The push is driven by a basic operational problem: officials and diplomats say stockpiles are thin and promised purchases are not turning into signed orders. Euronews reports the Commission has acknowledged that some defence authorisations can take up to a year, an interval that matters less in peacetime planning than in a war economy where factories need predictable pipelines. The omnibus is designed to standardise and accelerate procedures around joint procurement rules, access to the European Defence Fund, and the predictability of the regulatory environment for industry.

But the same talks also expose how hard it is to build a European defence market without creating a European defence state. Euronews describes divisions over eligibility criteria—who, exactly, counts as sufficiently “European” to benefit—alongside member states’ insistence on retaining control over procurement and industrial policy. The result is a familiar pattern: politicians announce rearmament, while the decisive bottleneck is paperwork, and the deciding fight is over which firms get to bill the public.

The geopolitical backdrop is doing its own work. EU High Representative Kaja Kallas, speaking in Tallinn, warned that Russia is preparing for a long confrontation with the West and that deterrence depends on European credibility, Euronews reports. The same story notes that US President Donald Trump has distanced Washington from transatlantic commitments and escalated rhetoric on issues such as Greenland, pushing European capitals to treat American support as conditional rather than automatic.

A negotiator close to the talks told Euronews there had been movement on “defence readiness and permit-granting,” but that the eligibility question remained the major unresolved issue. Cyprus’s presidency ends in June, and mediators are trying to deliver a finished text before that deadline.

Henrik Dahl, the Danish MEP leading parts of the file, said Europe “must be ready by 2030” and that “each day counts.” The Commission’s own estimate of up to a year for some approvals is still sitting on the table as the talks continue.