Brussels, 3 December 2025
Member of the European Parliament and member of the committee on security and defence (SEDE) successfully included her amendments in the report on the “Drones and new systems of warfare – the EU’s need to adapt to be fit for today’s security challenges”.
Given the increasing security challenges, the European Commission has identified four flagship projects and a method to quickly fill major capability gaps. Of the four priority projects, the most urgent is a drone-defence initiative, following three and a half years of war in Ukraine that have revealed their strategic importance in the new art of warfare. In her annual State of the Union address, President of the Commission Ursula von der Leyen introduced the concept of an “anti-drone wall.” The report of the European Parliament comes in a context of repeated drone violations of the EU airspace and calls on the EU and its Member States to urgently work on concrete projects intended to fill capability gaps in the field of integrated air and missile defence, particularly related to drone and anti-drone warfare.
Zovko integrated several important amendments in this report, including one calling on the European Commission to integrate willing Western Balkan countries into the Drone Wall project, alongside deeper cooperation in the fields of security and defence, including capacity-building, countering hybrid threats, and protecting critical infrastructure.
Moreover, Zovko included amendments stressing that partnerships in the Western Balkans and in the EU’s immediate neighbourhood are essential for regional stability and resilience, and recognising that the Western Balkans are exposed to malign foreign influence, hybrid threats, disinformation and political interference that seek to undermine European security.