The 24 member states represented on the steering board of the European Defence Agency EDA have on 2 March 2005 backed efforts to open the fragmented European defence procurement market through a voluntary intergovernmental code of conduct.
The defence procurement area is generally exempt from the EU's internal market logic through the treaty's article 296, which hampers synergy and economics of scale in the European defence industry.
The Commission is currently going through a Green Paper to prepare community legislation that could introduce a degree of competition. While waiting for the adoption of the legislation, the code of conduct would pave the way to a voluntary opening up of competitive tenders in the EU.
