Recent crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the sharp increase in demand for certain defence products, in particular ammunition, have exposed vulnerabilities of the Union’s supply chains. Those crises have also revealed how disruptions in the supply of those products, or of components or raw materials critical to their production, can hinder the functioning of the internal market. Those crises have highlighted the likely risk of emergence of diverging measures at national level, including for the preservation of stocks as a matter of national security and the certification of defence products, and the lack of coordination at Union level to address the shortages of products of critical importance for responding to the emerging crises, as well as of components and raw materials indispensable to their production, resulting in difficulties accessing or acquiring the products, components and raw materials needed to manufacture the relevant products, with the concrete risk of thereby hampering entire production chains. It is crucial to prevent the emergence of obstacles to cross-border trade between Member States due to divergences in national law, as such divergences would restrict the free movement of critical products and of the related components and raw materials in the internal market and disrupt the functioning of supply chains. Those difficulties along the supply chains also revealed a lack of crisis management tools and coordination mechanisms, insufficient information sharing, and an insufficient overview of manufacturing capacities across the Union, in particular for defence products.
Text as published in the Official Journal, reproduced verbatim (including any typographical quirks of the source). For the authentic version, see EUR-Lex.
