EU Repurposes Civil Funds for Defence: Horizon Europe, EIB, and the ReArm Europe Plan

Since 2022, security has become a decisive factor in EU industrial policy and in the way public money is used to support innovation and production. The EU is not creating a new defence budget line; it is changing the rules of existing programmes so that defence-relevant and dual-use projects can access funding that was previously framed as civilian. What is changing is the perimeter: eligibility, implementation conditions, and how different instruments can be combined. This creates new opportunities, but it is not an unlimited opening. Access is conditional and increasingly shaped by security screening, origin and control requirements, and compliance obligations that affect who can participate and how projects are structured. For companies, the key question is how to build dual-use projects that remain eligible while meeting these constraints. For investors, the key question is how EU grants and EU-backed finance alter risk, timelines, and bankability along the innovation-to-industrialisation chain. For public authorities, the key question is how governance and accountability evolve when security priorities enter mainstream instruments. Readiness 2030 should therefore be read as a legal and financial reconfiguration of tools already in the budget, not as a single new fund. The result is a more integrated pipeline from research to scale-up, under tighter strategic conditions.