Il Programma per l’industria europea della difesa: rilevanza, sfide e opportunità per l’Italia

EU leaders have recently announced new plans to invest in the European defence industry. However, the only initiative with its own regulatory framework and budget currently under negotiation between EU institutions and member states is the European Defence Industrial Programme (EDIP), part of the European Defence Industrial Strategy (EDIS) proposed by the European Commission in March 2024.
This paper is based on the text of the author’s speech at the hearing on “A new European Defence Industrial Strategy” and “European Defence Industry Programme”, held at the Senate Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee on 13 February 2025. The paper discuss the aforementioned EDIS, and in particular the EDIP, from an Italian perspective, addressing five issues: the EDIP relevance in relation to its budget; the balance between EU and non-EU acquisitions; the problem of Italian co-financing to EDIP; the challenges in terms of planning, regulations and human resources of the Italian Ministry of Defence to implement the EDIP; EDIS as an opportunity for a paradigm shift in the European Investment Bank.