I. Introduction
The European Commission presented an ‘Action Plan on Drone and Counter Drone Security’ (hereinafter, the ‘Action Plan’) on 11 February 2026 (COM(2026) 81 final), in an effort to develop a comprehensive, coordinated and united approach to counter the multi-fold, growing security threats to the protection of critical infrastructure posed by malicious drone operations. By reinforcing security, the Action Plan also aims to support the development of a competitive European drone market. This blog post presents the main pillars of the Action Plan by situating it within the broader set of initiatives the Commission has brought forward to reinforce the EU’s preparedness and its internal security and defence priorities.
II. The Pillars of the Action Plan on Drone and Counter Drone Security
A. Increasing resilience and preparedness
The first pillar of the Action Plan concentrates, on one side, on enhancing resilience measures to safeguard critical infrastructures, external borders, and public spaces, and, on the other side, on increasing the European industrial production capacity in drones and counter-drone systems.
The Commission will propose a Drone Security Package to adapt the existing regulatory framework for airborne drones to the evolving security threats. In particular, it will strengthen the identification and accountability of drone operations, including by extending mandatory registration and identification requirements to all drones above 100g or avoiding takeoffs unless an operator identification number has been entered. At the same time, regulatory simplification measures will be presented to introduce flexibility for certain operations. Work with Member States will start with a coordinated Security risk assessment on drones and counter-drone capacities, with a view to adopting a Drone Security Toolbox. To improve preparedness, the Commission will also issue guidelines for critical entities under Directive (EU) 2022/2557 (Critical Entities Resilience Directive), including specific advice on countering drone threats. It will also propose a voluntary stress-test plan for Member States to assess the resilience of critical infrastructure against drone intrusions and a working group targeting meteorological balloon threats.
On the other hand, the Commission will support the scaling up of drone and counter-drone start-ups and the ramping up of production capacities by mobilising the right level of investment at the national and EU levels, from both a civilian and defence perspective. To increase the coherence and impact of EU instruments (e.g., EU funding programmes such as Horizon Europe or the European Defence Fund), the Commission proposes a new and coordinated framework which includes a civil-military industrial mapping, regulatory sandboxes to test innovative drone and counter-drone technologies, the upgrading of the counter-drone Living Lab of the JRC into an EU centre of excellence, a certification scheme for counter-drone systems embedding safety requirements and investments into massification of production capacities for deployable drones and counter-drone systems. Regarding the latter, the Action Plan does not state whether a future cybersecurity certification scheme under Regulation (EU) 2019/881 (Cybersecurity Act) for drone security will be proposed in the Union Rolling Work Programme.
B. Increasing the capacity to detect threats from drones
The absence of integrated air surveillance for drone activities, combined with the inherent limitations of detection capacities, allows malicious actors to potentially evade detection. To enhance situational awareness, the Commission suggests integrating relevant data into dedicated single air display systems (CIMACT). It also proposes establishing an EU drone incident platform to learn from past incidents and to promote information sharing between civil aviation authorities, law enforcement, and the military, similar to the rationale for the Cybersecurity Incident Review Mechanism under Regulation (EU) 2025/38 (Cyber Solidarity Act). Additionally, it aims to integrate tracking and identification capabilities into national border surveillance systems.
Existing 5G telecommunication networks could be leveraged to enhance and broaden the AI-based automated detection of drones, e.g. by providing behaviour-based alerts upon identifying unusual SIM card identities or types of data activities. To this end, the Commission is planning to adopt an Implementing Decision to allow the use of spectrum for sensing. On a different level, cellular sensing can be leveraged to detect drones or balloons that are not connected.
C. Stronger EU cooperation and solidarity in the response phase
While the Commission acknowledges that operational incident response remains a responsibility of Member States, given the strong link with national security and defence matters, coordinated actions at EU level can support Member States in deploying counter-drone capacities and solutions. As eloquently put in the Introduction of the Action Plan, the drone-related threats, by exploiting the cross-border nature of the internal market and shared infrastructure, make clear that “a threat against one Member State is a threat against the Union as a whole”.
First, the Commission proposes launching an annual EU-wide large-scale drone security/blueprint exercise to test cross-border cooperation with relevant civilian and military actors, particularly in light of emerging multi-vector threats (swarmed or miniaturised drones) and cross-border scenarios, for fragmented measures and capabilities are hardly sustainable.
Second, the Commission will liaise with Member States to establish a voluntary ‘EU counter-drone deployment initiative’ for critical infrastructure based on: i) an overview of EU dual-use counter-drone capability needs; ii) a joint development pilot programme for counter-drone capacities; iii) a voluntary EU joint purchasing for deploying counter-drone solutions in critical infrastructures.
Third, AI Gigafactories should support the development of sovereign European command-and-control capabilities for autonomous systems, aiming to deploy software that can detect and counter sophisticated, coordinated drone threats.
Fourth, the Commission also proposes to set up ‘Rapid Counter-drone emergency teams’, acting as rapidly deployable reserve units, similar to the EU Cybersecurity Reserve established in the context of the EU Cybersecurity Emergency Mechanism set out in the Cyber Solidarity Act, to enhance the solidarity and mutual assistance against drone threats.
Fifth, the Commission will support Frontex in using drones for enhanced border surveillance purposes through joint operations, drone and counter-drone pilots and live demonstrations.
Lastly, at the regulatory level, the Commission will study the feasibility of an EU-level counter-drone regulatory framework that sets common minimum binding and non-binding rules for Member State authorities and, notably, for private operators of critical infrastructure, to clarify the roles and responsibilities of all actors involved. In parallel, the Commission will issue a Recommendation on countering drone threats for law enforcement operators and encourage Member States to develop a legal framework that enables civilian and critical infrastructure operators to take effective remedial measures against drone threats, including takedowns.
D. Strengthening defence readiness against drone threats
Beyond enhancing the EU’s resilience, the Commission highlights the need to further strengthen Europe’s defence readiness to counter drone threats, which are an integral part of modern, hybrid warfare. The Commission and the High Representative will take forward the European Drone Defence Initiative, with a view to supporting coherence across capability, operational and industrial efforts at EU level. This initiative will be integrated within the broader Defence Readiness Roadmap, where a dedicated Priority Capability Area Drone and Counter-Drone has been set to address specific shortfalls. This work will draw notably on Ukraine’s battlefield experience. Related to that, the Commission is establishing a Drone Alliance Initiative with Ukraine to incentivise the creation of an innovative industrial ecosystem, and it will support exchanges and training programmes between Ukraine and Member States for drone pilots, engineers and maintenance specialists.
III. Concluding remarks
The Action Plan lays out a series of short- and long-term measures to address the recent surge in drone threats facing the EU, which go well beyond airspace as they impact the safeguarding of critical infrastructure and public areas. Beyond the clearer goal of enhancing security, it is worth emphasising that the Action Plan also seeks to unlock the potential for innovation, economic growth, and job creation across sectors in a competitive European drone market. Although the Action Plan primarily focuses on civilian actions aimed at prevention, detection, and response, it takes a holistic, whole-of-government approach by enhancing civil-military cooperation to bolster the resilience and protection of critical infrastructure. Drone security and counter-drone capabilities are now an integral part of European security and cannot exclusively rely on the military, as their development and implementation increasingly rely on robust public-private partnerships that bring together state authorities, industry, infrastructure operators, and technology providers.
The Action Plan’s approach is also significant in terms of the allocation of competences among the Union and the Member States. On the one hand, the Commission acknowledges that safeguarding critical infrastructure, external borders, public spaces and ensuring aviation and maritime security remain primarily the responsibility of Member States. On the other hand, the cross-border character and high-impact of drone-related incidents make “enhanced coordination, shared preparedness and solidarity at EU level indispensable”, as a “threat against one Member States, is a threat to the Union as a whole”. Such ‘hybridisation’ of multilevel competences and instruments (Casolari, 2023, p. 323) is unsurprising as in security matters, including cybersecurity (Bygrave, 2025), the Union is progressively exercising a more assertive capacity to strengthen functional supranational competences (e.g., the functioning of the internal market per Art. 114 TFUE) to the detriment of Member States’ prerogatives (Ferri, 2025, p. 56).
Against this backdrop, the key questions are whether the measures in the Action Plan will be implemented quickly enough to address a rapidly evolving threat that has transformed modern warfare, whether Member States will cooperate and deploy these measures in a coordinated manner (to support and monitor the Plan’s national implementation, Member States are encouraged to appoint a National Drone Security Coordinator) and, related to that, whether this framework might mark a turning point in the European integration process in the security and, notably, defence sector.
Essential bibliography:
L.A. BYGRAVE, The emergence of EU cybersecurity law: A tale of lemons, angst, turf, surf and grey boxes, in Computer Law & Security Review, n. 56, 2025.
F. CASOLARI, Supranational Security and National Security in Light of the EU Strategic Autonomy Doctrine: The EU-Member States Security Nexus Revisited, in EFALR, n. 4, 2023.
F. FERRI, Union’s Tech-Related Sanctions and Moving Frontiers of the European Integration: Reflections on an Evolving Legal Landscape, in Unione europea e diritti, n. 1, 2025.
