EU defence start-ups face funding and bureaucracy traps, MEPs warn

Detailed summary

Europe's rearmament ambitions face another hurdle after MEPs overwhelmingly backed a damning report exposing two major obstacles holding back defence start-ups and SMEs from bringing new technologies to market.

European defence start-ups and small and medium-sized businesses face two distinct “valleys of death” as they struggle to bring new technologies to market, according to a damning report backed by more than 400 MEPs on Thursday.“Our small companies invent excellent new defence technologies, but too often they never make it into production, or they end up growing in the United States or elsewhere,” said the report’s rapporteur, Latvian Green MEP Mārtiņš Staķis.“Our defence systems are still built for yesterday’s wars and are afraid of failure.”The term “valley of death” describes the critical period when a business risks running out of funding before its products become commercially viable…

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