Industrial Policy: the security sector

Europe’s security sector is highly splintered.  Not only is the supplier base spread across countless industrial sub-sectors, but the demand-side cascades down through a huge diversity of end-user authorities – from pan-European to national to regional and local. And there is still far too little coordination across borders.

Europe faces two main industrial challenges in the sector, namely to:

• overcome the market’s fragmentation
• strengthen the industrial base

DG Enterprise and Industry is considering a number of possible industrial initiatives to help strengthen the sector. These range from faster funding for prioritized R&D projects to the definition of security codes of conduct for supply chains.

Many of these ideas were discussed during the October 2011 workshop in Brussels which DG Enterprise and Industry organised with stakeholders.  For news about that event see: Stakeholders outline their views to Commission on future EU industrial strategy for the European security sector.