EU amends programmes to fund defence and dual‑use investments

The European Parliament has adopted at first reading a regulation amending multiple EU funding programmes to incentivise defence-related and dual-use investments under the ReArm Europe Plan.

• Amendments expand defence and dual‑use scope of Horizon Europe (including opening the EIC Accelerator to dual‑use and critical defence technologies), the Digital Europe Programme, the Connecting Europe Facility, the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) and the European Defence Fund, adding a fourth STEP sector for defence technologies, enabling AI Factories and AI Gigafactories, and clarifying eligibility rules and security‑based participation restrictions.
• Measures include associating Ukraine to the EDF, enabling resource transfers between cohesion funds and defence instruments, and prioritising dual‑use infrastructure (notably military mobility corridors and digital/cloud/AI capacity), with derogations from the Financial Regulation to reinvest EIC revenues and provisions for higher co‑financing and pre‑financing rates for dual‑use transport infrastructure on EU Priority Military Mobility Corridors.