Finland’s former President Sauli Niinistö is no fool. A 12-year veteran of the Presidential Palace in Helsinki, he ended seven decades of neutrality and led his country into NATO once it was clear that Vladimir Putin wanted to destroy the post-World War II settlement.
So when Niinistö delivered his 165-page report on European Union (EU) security to Brussels on October 31, it carried a certain authority. Finland, after all, had kept its guard up even after the Cold War while other Europeans frolicked with their peace dividends.
That said, he delivered a message that many in Europe remain unwilling to hear. That the 27-member bloc lacks a coherent security structure, that its defense industries are fractured, inefficient, and small, and that its intelligence services don’t share their material. And that, perhaps most importantly, the EU simply isn’t ready for joint action in a dangerous new world where enemies adeptly exploit the most sensitive areas of modern life.
And to top all that, he suggested that 20% of the EU’s total budget of around $180bn annually should be devoted to defense.
Niinistö made clear that Russia is the primary threat to Europe, given its history of military aggression and its continuing talk of war with the West. He makes clear, too, that the continent’s preparedness is far short of where it should be (there are now 77% fewer European main battle tanks than in 1992, for example, and it takes two years to manufacture one vehicle.)
The statistics are grim. During the period from 1999-2024, EU defense spending rose by 20%, while Russia’s increased by 300% and China’s by 600%. The bloc is hopelessly dependent on imports, including almost 98% of its fossil fuels and most of its key minerals, while Europe’s smaller and less profitable defense manufacturers produce five to six times more military systems than the US at a much higher cost.
He notes the lack of preparedness comes as both major political parties in Washington agree, whatever their other disagreements, that China is now the most serious threat to the US. Some Republicans say this means Europe cannot expect US largesse to protect them, but Democrats, too, argue that Europe must do more.
“This forcefully underlines the extremely urgent need for a stronger European contribution to European security as part of a rebalanced transatlantic relationship,” the report says. “Further prioritization of East Asia by the US for its deployed military capabilities, particularly air and naval capacities on which NATO relies heavily, could leave Europe to face the Russian threat with [a] dwindling US military presence.”
Money is part of the problem, but Niinistö also tackles the thorny issue of the tensions between EU and national areas of responsibility, as well as between the bloc and NATO, including intelligence collection and dissemination, which nations tend to regard as sovereign treasure available only to a handful of their own nationals.
Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission President who commissioned the report as part of her pivot to defense and security, acknowledged that this would be difficult.
“We all know that intelligence gathering is primarily the responsibility of member states,” she said, but added, “We should build on improving the flow of information, information gathering and intelligence gathering.”
The report made a number of proposals to improve matters.
- An EU “preparedness” act sets out principles and targets and covers not just defense and security but also issues like climate change and cyber warfare.
- Consider the downgrading of national veto powers in a crisis to speed up decision-making and ensure hostile states cannot manipulate or pressure a single EU member to sabotage the bloc’s ability to act, dependent as it is on unanimity.
- Make EU defense research and funding more coherent and cooperative, and raise military preparedness.
- Involve ordinary citizens in the process and raise risk awareness.
- Work with the private sector to raise societal resilience in key sectors.
There is also a significant focus on hybrid warfare. With Russia stepping up sabotage against Europe, he suggests a dual approach of deterrence by denial — where Russian and other malign groups are dissuaded from action by EU protective measures, including counter-intelligence — and deterrence by punishment, where EU states agree on methods of retaliation for attacks.
There are signs of some more imaginative thinking here. Hostile states are often reliant on the EU in other ways, for example, through trade or regulation.
“For instance, without framing them expressly as counter-hybrid operations, the EU and member states can use legal proceedings (e.g., anti-corruption, tax evasion measures, environmental inspections at sea, anti-coercion, etc.), as well as actions in other domains, such as trade (e.g., anti-subsidy or anti-dumping investigations, leading to access restrictions to the Single Market) to raise the costs for threat actors.”
This is a comprehensive report (perhaps a bit too comprehensive — its length and complexity raise the question of who will read it, and the recommendations are sometimes phrased in hard-to-penetrate Brussels-speak), and marks another moment of the EU accepting that it must better focus on threats and security.
Quite how long that might take to achieve results is another matter. Unless the bloc can accelerate its response times (which is one of Niinistö’s points), such reports will merely represent a counsel of perfection.
Francis Harris is Managing Editor at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) and oversees Europe’s Edge. He was a foreign correspondent with the Daily Telegraph and served in Prague, London, New York, and Washington.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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