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David van Wijnen investigates to what extent the Netherlands, as a Member State of the European Union, can guarantee national security when buying existing and developing military technology, without coming in conflict with European law. Formulating clauses how to maintain, modify, further develop and, finally, obtain military technology through EU public procurement procedures can easily conflict with intellectual property (IP) law and other fundamental principles of civil law. An example of such an IP issue is a vendor lock-in. This means that the contracting authority has no possibility to switch to another supplier for maintenance and updates of existing technologies, because the contracting authority or the other supplier does not possess the IP rights or licenses required by the regulation. 

This leads to crucial questions such as how to reconcile the tensions that arise between on the one hand the interests of the contracting authority for ‘national security-proof’ procurement of military technology, and on the other hand the safeguarding of the intellectual property rights of the economic operators providing the technology. Another example is the application of export controls. Member States (or their contracting authorities) that hold the IP rights for military technology can refuse to grant licenses to (the contracting authorities of) other states for the sale or resale of military technologies. This raises questions about the extent to which this form of export control may be used in the joint development of military technology between more Member States, especially when using resources from the European Defence Fund.  

The research also attempts to identify the best method (in terms of choice of procedure, selection and award criteria, contract clauses, etc.) to safely purchase this kind of technology under the EU Defence Procurement Directive. Another question is in which cases the innovation procedure can be a good choice for the development of new - not yet existing -  technologies? And how does this procedure relate not only to the other procedures - such as the competitive dialogue - but especially to the European Defence Fund, by which the European Union has created new opportunities for the development of military goods? The research will show to what extent it is possible to safely purchase military technology through public procurement procedures. 

The research of David van Wijnen is conducted under the supervision of prof. dr. Elisabetta Manunza and prof. dr. Linda Senden.