Burkard Schmitt

Defence & Security Director

ASD

Burkard Schmitt is a German national born in Würzburg (Germany) in 1963. He holds a PhD in Contemporary History and has more than 25 years of professional experience in the security and defence sector at the EU level. From 1995 to 1998, he worked in Germany as a consultant for the social democratic parliamentary group in the Bundestag and for business start-up programmes in former Yugoslavia and Palestine. In 1998 he joined the European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) in Paris, where he became Assistant Director in 2002. From 2006 to 2014 he worked as defence expert for the European Commission (then DG Internal Market and Services). Since the end of 2014, he is Director for Security and Defence at the Aerospace, Security and Defence Industries Association of Europe (ASD). During his various assignments he has worked on a broad range of security and defence issues, with a special focus on the European defence market. During his stay at the EUISS, he was policy adviser for the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and various DGs of the Commission (Research, Industry and Internal Market). At the same time, he published extensively and managed numerous European and transatlantic research projects. At the European Commission, he advised the DG’s senior management and Commissioner Barnier on defence and security issues. He conceptualised the Defence Procurement Directive 2009/81 and was part of the team in charge of its negotiation and transposition. He also authored the Defence Communication of July 2013. In his current position at ASD, he supervises the Association’s activities in the defence and security sectors. His main mission is to build common industry positions on relevant EU initiatives and act as an interlocutor vis-à-vis the European institutions. In this context, he has, for example, coordinated industry’s input to the European Defence Industrial Strategy and the White Paper on European Defence – Readiness 2030.