The European Defence Agency collects defence data on an annual basis which is provided by the Ministries of Defence of the Agency’s 27 Member States. EDA acts as the custodian of the data and publishes the aggregated figures in its annual Defence Data Reports.

EDA’s defence data publications provide key indicators such as total defence expenditure, defence investment, collaborative investment and spending on research and technology.

A complete dataset is available since 2006, based on the revised list of indicators, including the four agreed collective benchmarks for investment, as approved by the Agency’s Ministerial Steering Board.