A decision was made in the EU to lighten the bureaucracy – Comrade: “I have also negotiated with the Russians”

The negotiation agreement reached on Wednesday will lighten the bureaucracy of the defense industry, speed up permit processes and facilitate the transfer of defense material within the EU. These changes also improve the operating conditions of the Finnish defense industry.

At the core of the agreement is the elimination of administrative delays in procurement, permit procedures, reporting and cross-border cooperation.

MEP Pekka Toveri (kok, EPP), who was the rapporteur of the Security and Defense Policy Committee (SEDE), described the negotiation process as exceptionally heavy:

“I have negotiated with Croats, Serbs and Bosniaks in Bosnia, with tribal leaders in Afghanistan and even with the Russians, but none of those negotiations were as demanding as these. The negotiations brought out in a very concrete way the central sensitivities and stumbling blocks of the member states when it comes to strengthening the European defense industry,” says Toveri.

Despite the difficulties, improvements were also made.

“While we did not achieve all of our goals, we made significant progress, including improvements to smooth intra-EU transfers of defense equipment and streamlining procurement procedures.”

The key change concerns the procurement threshold, which will be raised to two million euros. This enables smaller defense procurements to be made without heavy bidding processes.

“It enables direct procurement and reduces bureaucracy both from large, but also from small and medium-sized companies,” says the internal market committee negotiator Anna-Maja Henriksson (rkp, Renew).

Moving equipment becomes easier

Licensing procedures will also be significantly accelerated. The maximum duration of the permit process for defense readiness projects will be 102 working days. At the same time, intra-EU transfers are facilitated with new general transfer permits, which are intended to speed up the movement of material between member countries.

According to Henriksson, from the point of view of the Finnish defense industry, the changes are “a step forward and in the right direction”.

The most difficult dispute in the negotiations concerned the EU criteria related to joint procurement and how much of the procurement should be produced in the EU. Parliament would have liked further simplifications of joint procurement, but the member states did not accept binding criteria. Because of this, some of the reforms were still not implemented, and the matter was postponed for further preparation by the Commission.

“These have been difficult negotiations, and not everyone gets everything they want, but you can say that this is now an important step forward,” says Henriksson.

Comrade emphasizes the importance of the final result by stating that the European Union cannot afford to show weakness or inability to make decisions in such a way that one institution blocks another.

“We managed to avoid this outcome,” says Toveri.

“We are still far from where we should be in developing Europe’s defense capabilities and industrial capacity, but change will not happen overnight,” he continues.

The preliminary agreement still requires the official approval of the Council and the European Parliament.