Europe’s New Favourite Word: Readiness

Brussels has discovered urgency again. EU foreign ministers meeting there are discussing an emergency security protocol meant to help member states respond faster when a hybrid threat is identified — a tidy bureaucratic answer to sabotage, intimidation and other operations that sit just below the threshold of open conflict and still manage to cause plenty of damage.

The mechanism is being pushed by EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Kallas said intelligence shows Russia is planning more sabotage acts, and she argued that such actions are aimed at European democracy, at dividing communities and at weakening support for Ukraine. Under the plan, a member state could trigger the mechanism, after which the EU would convene to coordinate its response. In other words, Europe wants a switch it can finally flip when the lights start flickering.

Von der Leyen had already outlined the idea in her State of the European Union speech in Strasbourg in mid-September. Kallas said the protocol would cover incidents that fall under the threshold for armed aggression but still demand a reaction. That leaves the Union in its familiar middle ground: not quite war, not quite peace, and apparently still in need of a committee.

The timing is hardly accidental. On Friday, a Russian aircraft breached Finnish airspace over the Gulf of Finland, prompting Finnish and Swedish authorities to scramble fighter jets. Finnish Defence Minister Antti Häkkänen said Europe and NATO need bigger measures and stronger coordination to deal with such incidents. He also said the episode should push Europe to strengthen its air defences further, adding that money and joint procurements are needed. The language may be dry, but the message was not: hardware tends to work better than declarations.

Swedish Defence Minister Pål Jonson said Russia is trying to scare and intimidate Ukraine’s allies through hybrid attacks, but argued that the effort will fail if the EU continues supporting Kyiv and adds more sanctions, visa restrictions and measures against the shadow fleet. Estonia’s newly appointed Defence Minister Martin Herem took a similar line, saying Tallinn’s priority is to keep supporting Ukraine, either bilaterally or through further talks about immobilised Russian assets, despite threats from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and what he described as sabotage by Russian special forces.

The mood is darkening beyond Brussels as well. On the same day, the Danish Defence Intelligence Service said the risk of Russian military action against NATO countries is growing, while describing a full invasion as highly unlikely, though not impossible. Spanish newspaper El Mundo reported last week that Russia could be preparing a drone operation targeting Spain, France and Italy.

Ministers are also expected to discuss the EU’s first Defence Readiness Report. Reuters described it as warning that the bloc is not rearming quickly enough to be ready to defend against Russia by 2030. Various European intelligence agencies have identified 2030 as a possible point by which the Kremlin could be ready to launch armed aggression against NATO allies. To reduce that risk, the EU would need to close gaps in air and missile defence, ground combat capabilities, naval forces, ammunition stockpiles and drones.

So the Union is finally talking about readiness, coordination and deterrence with the seriousness the subject deserves. The harder part, predictably, is the one that cannot be solved by announcing another mechanism: spending the money, buying the equipment and acting before the next incident forces yet another round of emergency decorum.

Written by Andreas Hofer andreas.hofer@alpineweekly.com