The European Commission has approved Germany’s plan to acquire a 40 percent stake in KNDS, the maker of Leopard 2 tanks and PzH 2000 howitzers. The company also plans to expand production in Germany and add thousands of jobs.
Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz has proposed a new EU “associate member” status for Ukraine that would bring Kiev closer to EU institutions and security arrangements while delaying full membership rights.
The European Commission has opened applications for founding members of a new EU-Ukraine Drone Alliance aimed at improving European drone and counter-drone capabilities. The initiative will bring together industry, innovators and military users from Europe and Ukraine.
Germany’s chancellor said Ukraine’s path to EU membership is key to ending the war with Russia and suggested ‘part of Ukrainian territory will no longer be Ukrainian.’
The EU has approved SAFE defence funding for France and Czechia, allocating up to €15.09 billion and €2.06 billion respectively. The financing supports joint procurement and investment to strengthen defence production and readiness across member states.
The European Commission and the High Representative have introduced a military mobility package aimed at enabling fast, coordinated movement of troops across Europe by 2027, alongside a Defence Industry Transformation Roadmap to strengthen innovation and production capacity. The proposals include harmonised cross-border procedures, new emergency transport mechanisms, infrastructure upgrades and measures to accelerate defence technology development across the EU.
18 European Union member states have asked for loans worth €127 billion under the new €150 billion SAFE fund for defence spending with the deadline for formal submission of requests under SAFE to end on 30 November 2025.
The €150 billion SAFE fund will come into force on May 29, offering loans to EU states for defence procurement, that will require 65 percent of all purchases to be of European origin, with contractors required to fully control design to avoid new dependencies.
An agreement between the EU and the UK has included the first steps towards allowing British companies to compete for orders paid for by a €150B loan program intended to boost European defence, that would otherwise only be serviced by European firms.
StratPost has discovered the country to be unfairly facing charges of abetting piracy.
