European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has signed a “drone deal” with Ukraine intended to combine Kyiv’s battlefield expertise with the industrial capacity of European Union manufacturers.
The agreement was announced on July 15 at a ceremony in Kyiv’s St Michael’s Square marking Ukraine’s Statehood Day. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky used the occasion to present von der Leyen with the first Order of Europe, a newly created Ukrainian award.
“This deal will bring together Ukrainian ingenuity and Europe’s industrial scale,” von der Leyen said.
She said Europe had huge industrial capacity and secure production sites but lacked the battle-tested knowledge Ukraine had forged since Russia’s invasion in February 2022. Recent drone incursions and alerts across member states had shown the need to deploy proven systems at speed, she argued.
The deal forms part of a new EU-Ukraine Defence Industrial Partnership, which the European Commission said would provide a single framework building on the bilateral drone agreements already struck between Kyiv and individual member states.
The two sides agreed to promote joint production of drones and counter-drone systems by the end of 2026. Cooperation would then extend to anti-ballistic missiles by 2028, with the stated aim of closing air defence gaps.
Eighteen founding members of the drone deal are due to meet in Brussels in September. They include Spain’s Indra Group, Italy’s Fincantieri and Germany’s Quantum Systems, alongside Ukrainian firms such as Skyfall Industries and Tencore.
The Commission disbursed a further €1 billion to Ukraine for drone procurement on the same day. That is the second payment under the first €6 billion tranche of the €90 billion Ukraine Support Loan, adopted by the European Parliament and the Council in February.
It follows a €3.2 billion instalment under a dedicated macro-financial assistance operation on June 25 and a first €3.9 billion drone payment on June 30. The Commission said it had also approved a €10 billion disbursement plan covering additional drones, missiles and fighter aircraft.
Ukraine has been fully associated to the European Defence Fund and the European Defence Industry Programme, letting Ukrainian and EU companies bid together for research money.
Zelensky told the ceremony Ukraine was producing 10 million drones a year and aimed to double that figure. He said his country had fundamentally changed the battlefield.
Von der Leyen put no figure on any new funding attached to the deal itself. It was her 11th visit to Ukraine since the start of the full-scale invasion.
Kyiv has signed nine drone agreements with individual countries, three of them at the recent NATO summit in Ankara. The July 15 deal is the first intended to cover companies across the bloc as a whole.
