EU-Ukraine Drone Alliance to Hold Inaugural Meeting in Brussels

The inaugural meeting of the EU-Ukraine Drone Alliance, tasked with accelerating the roll-out of drone and counter-drone capabilities across the bloc, will take place on 11 September in Brussels, two industry sources confirmed to Euractiv. The all-day gathering will be attended by Defence Commissioner Andrius Kubilius, a Commission official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. It will largely be a stocktaking exercise aimed at establishing a timeline for action and discussing the group’s initial activities, the official and a third industry source added.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. The grouping comprises 19 companies including ORQA, Indra Group, Fincantieri, WB Electronics/WB Group, Destinus, Delair, RSI Europe, TERMA A/S, Quantum Systems on the EU side and Skyfall Industries, Greentech Harvest, Tencore, Deviro, Vyriy Industry, Scientific Production Company ‘ATHLON AVIA’, TAF Industries, UFORCE and F-Drones on the Ukrainian side. “We’re trying to learn from them a lot, how the ecosystem functions, how the government and drone industries function together,” Simonas Šatūnas, head of Kubilius’s cabinet, said of the alliance at an event on Wednesday. It is unclear, however, what will come out of the gathering. A fourth industry source was sceptical about the likely outcome, describing it to Euractiv as “yet another meeting.” Other Topics of Interest NABU Exposes Call Center Bribery Ring at Prosecutor General’s Office NABU revealed that a senior official at the Prosecutor General’s Office led a criminal organization protecting fraudulent call centers. The Commission sent out a call for members back in early May, stating that the chief aims of the alliance would be to “contribute to European efforts towards a comprehensive European drone and counter-drone capacity” and “offer a multi-layered and multilevel framework, able to link sensors and effectors across Europe and to support decision-making processes”. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen first presented the idea of a drone alliance in last year’s State of the Union speech, as part of a series of announcements to counter incursions into EU member states’ airspace. Since then, the Commission has inked a new “defence industrial partnership” with Ukraine, centred on an EU–Ukraine “drone deal”, which aims to “provide a single, coherent EU-Ukraine framework to facilitate, coordinate and support” the full implementation of the drone deals Kyiv has signed with several EU/EFTA capitals. The partnership could benefit from up to €10 billion ($11.6 billion) in unspent Security Action for Europe (SAFE) funds, von der Leyen said during a trip to Kyiv on 15 July. Eastern European countries have faced repeated drone incursions in recent months and are asking for the next EU budget to account for the consequences of Russia’s war for front-line countries. Estonia and Romania, for instance, both reported drone incursions this week, as Russia launched a large-scale air attack on Ukraine. See the original by Alice Tidey, Charles Cohen, Kjeld Neubert here. Euractiv is a European news website focused on EU policies. It was founded in 1999 by the French media publisher Christophe Leclercq. The website's headquarters and central editorial staff are located in Brussels, with offices in Paris and Berlin.