EUROPEAN PATROL CORVETTE (EPC)

Spain participates together with Italy, France and Greece in the European Patrol Corvette (EPC) project, which aims at designing and developing a corvette or light frigate-class limited warship unit with a displacement of 3,000 tons, a draft of less than 5 meters, and a modular approach allowing for different configurations based on the national operational needs of each country.

With this project, the Spanish Navy intends to build 6 units to replace today’s offshore patrol vessels (former "Descubierta"- and "Serviola"-class corvettes).

This is one of the most ambitious naval PESCO projects to date, and it poses a challenge for the coordination and management among the navies of the member countries and their defence industries. For this purpose, Navantia has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Naviris — a consortium made up of equal parts by the Italian company Fincantieri and the French company Naval Group — with the purpose of promoting industrial collaboration to develop the European corvette program.

Considered to be a “limited” escort, the EPC will be designed to perform a wide range of missions, largely aimed at enhancing maritime surveillance, sea superiority and force projection, particularly in the context of peacetime operations, such as the fight against piracy and smuggling, as well as humanitarian assistance operations, and operations to ensure freedom of navigation.