Hard Constraints vs Policy Objectives
In EU defence-industrial regulation, clarity depends on one fundamental separation: what the law requires versus what the law intends. This dossier addresses that separation, because many errors in procurement, compliance, and investment screening begin when policy language is mistaken for enforceable criteria. The instruments contain objectives about sovereignty, resilience, and industrial capacity, but only operative provisions create eligibility tests. A hard constraint is any rule that can exclude, condition access, impose a ceiling, prohibit sourcing, or mandate a time-bound obligation. By contrast, recitals and general aims explain direction, but do not by themselves generate a compliance outcome. The distinction matters because firms can appear strategically aligned while remaining legally ineligible, or can seem marginal while being structurally procurable. It also matters because derogations are not “flexibility” in the abstract: they are conditional exceptions with their own triggers and limits. Reading them incorrectly turns narrow pathways into assumed permissions and creates false confidence about market access. This dossier therefore establishes a disciplined reading method: identify the unit of application first, then extract the binding rule, then map the evidence required. The unit of application may be the firm, the supported action, the product configuration, the procurement contract, or the programme channel. Once that unit is fixed, each relevant provision can be translated into a testable condition that can later be encoded in a table. Where the texts are silent on operational detail, the correct output is not interpretation but a recorded gap. The result is an auditable basis for classifying companies as eligible, conditional, or structurally constrained under EU-backed demand. It provides the foundation for consistent due diligence that remains anchored in what the instruments explicitly state.