Building inter alia on the experience of the Defence Equity Facility, established in the context of the European Defence Fund as an InvestEU blending operation, the Commission should endeavour to set up a dedicated facility as part of the Programme to be referred to as the Fund Accelerating Defence Supply Chains Transformation (FAST). FAST should be implemented under indirect management. FAST will leverage, de-risk and speed-up investments needed to increase the defence manufacturing capacities on the territory of the Union of Union-based SMEs and small middle-capitalisation companies (small mid-caps), in the form of a blending operation offering support in the form of debt or equity. As the application for support in the form of debt under FAST might include information relating to the infrastructure, facilities, assets or resources used by the SME or the small mid-cap for the purpose of industrialising or manufacturing of defence products, it is appropriate to subject such support to rules requiring that such infrastructure, facilities, assets and resources are located on the territory of a Member State or of an associated country, with some targeted exceptions. FAST should be established as a blending operation, including under the InvestEU Programme established by Regulation (EU) 2021/523 of the European Parliament and Council, in close cooperation with its implementing partners.
Text as published in the Official Journal, reproduced verbatim (including any typographical quirks of the source). For the authentic version, see EUR-Lex.
