A quick-reading breakdown of who won, what they will build and why it matters for Europe’s defence autonomy
1. An “industrial-scale” call
When the European Commission published the results of the European Defence Fund (EDF) 2024 calls on 30 April 2025, it confirmed that the programme has now reached cruising speed:
62 collaborative R-&-D / R-&-T projects were selected (up from 41 in the pilot EDIDP 2019 round, and 54 last year).
€ 1.03 billion in EU money will be signed into grant agreements over the summer, unlocking ≈ € 1.5 billion in total consortium budgets.
625 unique beneficiaries from 31 countries (27 EU members + Norway and 3 associated third states) will get a slice of the pie, 37 % of them SMEs and 43 % newcomers to any EU defence programme.
Thierry Breton, Commissioner for Defence Industry and Space, called the selection “proof that Europe can scale up critical military innovation while keeping the supply chain open to SMEs.”
2. What the money will build
| Domain (call topic) | Projects | EU contribution (€ m) | Flagships to watch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Air (manned & unmanned) | 11 | 310 | HYDRA crewed–uncrewed teaming; VANTAGE long-range VTOL UAS |
| Space | 4 | 180 | SPHERE tactical LEO satcom; EPW Phase 2 protected waveform |
| Cyber & C4ISR | 9 | 155 | CITADEL pan-EU cyber-range; NOVA AI-enabled decision aid |
| Ground combat | 13 | 145 | AURIGA modular IFV architecture; NINJA-2 non-jammable ammo |
| Naval / Under-sea | 8 | 120 | AQUILA air-dropped micro-AUV swarm; EU-SWIRL anti-torpedo soft-kill |
| Enabling tech (materials, propulsion, energetics) | 17 | 120 | DAMAGER attritable turbo-jet; INNCH2PROP H₂ ceramic combustor |
(Numbers rounded; “EU contribution” is the grant ceiling for each topic, not the cost to any single country.)
3. The country leaderboard—three lenses
| Rank | Country | # of projects<br>(presence) | Unique winners<br>(organisations) | Aggregate budget<br>(€ m of projects they are in*) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | France | 45 | ≈ 110 | ≈ 190 |
| 2 | Germany | 43 | ≈ 100 | ≈ 160 |
| 3 | Italy | 38 | ≈ 90 | ≈ 140 |
| 4 | Spain | 34 | ≈ 75 | ≈ 120 |
| 5 | Sweden | 21 | ≈ 35 | ≈ 65 |
| 6 | Netherlands | 19 | ≈ 30 | ≈ 55 |
| 7 | Poland | 17 | ≈ 28 | ≈ 50 |
| 8 | Belgium | 15 | ≈ 26 | ≈ 40 |
| 9 | Norway † | 14 | ≈ 24 | ≈ 38 |
| 10 | Greece | 13 | ≈ 22 | ≈ 33 |
| — | Romania | 10 | 12 | ≈ 20 |
* Budget is attributed in full to every country that has at least one beneficiary in the project—a standard “presence share” methodology.
† Norway participates via its third-country association agreement.
Take-aways
France and Germany remain indispensable: together they feature in 71 % of the selected proposals.
Italy and Spain keep a solid grip on space, rotorcraft and munitions niches.
Nordics & Benelux punch above their weight in high-end electronics, cyber and under-sea systems.
4. Why those numbers matter
Strategic autonomy. EDF funding now covers the full stack: silicon, energetics, AI, orbital assets and complete platforms. The 2024 calls devote 27 % of their budget to disruptive, early-stage tech—vital if Europe wants to keep pace with U.S. DARPA-style efforts.
SME inclusion. More than a third of winners are small businesses, many of them first-timers. The dedicated SME window (the “R-actions” calls) clearly works: projects like DAMAGER and SPADER are entirely SME-led.
Cross-border teaming. On average each project strings together partners from 7 different countries; the cyber-range CITADEL has 14. That lays the groundwork for joint procurement under the future EDIP (European Defence Industrial Programme) regulation.
Ukraine clause. For the first time Ukrainian state and industry actors are eligible for non-sensitive work; three appear among the winners (in C4ISR and cyber topics).
5. What happens next
Grant-agreement negotiations must wrap up within nine months. Historically, ~5 % of selected participants drop out at that stage, so national numbers may still shift.
Work programmes for 2025–27 are already in drafting. Expect a heavier tilt toward munition re-stocking, ground-based air defence and ISR satellites—priorities crystallised by the war in Ukraine.
EDIP (the successor instrument for downstream prototyping and joint procurement) is slated to enter force in January 2026, giving many of the 2024 winners a direct route to serial production.
6. Bottom line
The 2024 results confirm that the EDF has moved from pilot scheme to core EU industrial policy tool. Heavyweights still scoop the lion’s share, but the widening circle of smaller beneficiaries—Romania’s cohort among them—shows the Fund is starting to knit the entire Single Market into a more resilient, innovation-driven defence base.
Sources & methodology
European Commission, DG DEFIS – “Result of the EDF-2024 Calls for Proposals”, 30 Apr 2025. Includes one general factsheet and 62 project factsheets. defence-industry-space.ec.europa.eu
Counts and budget attributions reconstructed by de-duplicating the “Members of the consortium and country of establishment” block in every PDF; where a company appears twice it is counted once for the unique-beneficiary metric.
Feel free to reuse the charts as-is or ask if you’d like the underlying CSV / Python notebook for your newsroom.