Over recent years, Member States have increasingly engaged in defence cooperation, in particular with a view to making their military capabilities converge. Union processes such as CARD and PESCO have, in particular, the purpose of supporting the implementation of relevant priorities by identifying and taking up opportunities for enhanced defence cooperation with a view to fulfilling the Union’s level of ambition in the area of security and defence. The constant deterioration of the geopolitical environment and the extreme volatility of the international environment make the development of operational cooperation even more necessary. To be effective, it might be necessary for a defence cooperation to require that the armed forces of cooperating Member States use the exact same defence product, or at least products so close that they are interchangeable. In such cases, a Member State participating in the establishment of or joining such a cooperation initiative, which goes beyond a mere cooperative procurement of defence products, should be allowed to derogate from the principles of transparency and competition and to directly award a contract without prior competition or publication of a contract notice to the undertaking from the EDTIB which produces that product, provided that this is necessary for the implementation of the defence cooperation concerned.
Text as published in the Official Journal, reproduced verbatim (including any typographical quirks of the source). For the authentic version, see EUR-Lex.
