Norway and Denmark join multinational European Patrol Corvette program

Europe, News December 15, 2021 , by IRIA No Comments

Norway and Denmark became the latest European nations to join European Patrol Corvette (EPC) program on December 13.

The EPC is a Permanent Structured Cooperation project, adopted by the European Council on 12 November 2019.

The EPC project is coordinated by Italy, with Spain, France, and Greece participating and Portugal as an observer.

“The objective is to design and develop a prototype for a new class of military ship, named “European Patrol Corvette” (EPC), which allows to host several systems and payloads, in order to accomplish, with a modular and flexible approach, a large number of tasks and missions,” according to the information available on Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) website.

According to a statement released by France’s Naval Group, Italy’s Fincantieri, their joint-venture Naviris, and Spain’s Navantia, Denmark and Norway joined other member countries as “co-founding” partners.

The statement also confirmed that four groups have applied for $68 million or €60 million in joint research funding.

“As major European industrial players in the naval defense sector, they believe that this is the right time to start a real, concrete, added-value collaboration around a common program that will be the first common naval capability in Europe… The promotion of the program to other European navies, with a joint action of nations already part of PESCO program, will strengthen the European industry, increasing cooperation, efficiency and lowering duplication in defense spending,” the statement added.

European firms are expected to start the funding in 2023 and spend money on areas, including unmanned technology, propulsion, modularity, and data management.