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European Commissioner for Defence Andrius Kubilius said Europe can respond to Russia in a “painful way” through the development of an anti-hybrid warfare playbook.
“We can find ways for how Russia will pay quite a painful price for their provocations,” he said in exclusive comments to Euronews’ flagship current affairs news programme, Europe Today.
“This is what the Commission president spoke about.”
He was responding to comments made by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at her agenda-setting State of the European Union speech on Wednesday, in which she proposed that Europe must develop a mechanism to be able to respond to hybrid warfare incidents.
Recent drone incursions have rattled Europe’s Eastern flank, as have many other incidents inhabiting the grey zone of warfare, such as cable-cuts and weaponised migration.
The steady drumbeat of incidents last month prompted five Baltic European Commissioners to demand a stronger response from the EU executive to support the region.
Von der Leyen used her State of the European Union address on Wednesday to outline a new European response to threats “which fall below armed aggression but clearly threaten our national security”.
Among the proposals the Commission president unveiled was a mechanism to complement NATO’s Article 4, which would be referred to as the Emergency Security Protocol.
“When triggered by one member state, all member states would convene to coordinate a European response,” von der Leyen explained, “to deter further escalation and to mitigate the impact.”
Coming together
Kubilius told Euronews that the European Commission is working on plans for how it can assist countries particularly impacted by hybrid threats.
“The European Union is a solidarity union,” he said.
But the security effort does not stop there, with von der Leyen also touting a potential new leader’s format, titled the European Security Council.
According to her, the group would include not just EU member states but also like-minded countries such as Ukraine, the United Kingdom, Norway and Canada, banded together to address the biggest geopolitical issues facing Europe – among them an increasingly brazen Russia and the retreat of the United States from Europe’s security architecture.
“For a long time, we have discussed a leaders’ format focused on the security of our continent,” von der Leyen said. “This is even more urgent now, given the nature and scale of the risks at play.”
In practice, leaders like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy are already frequently invited to European Council meetings. The new format would institutionalise this relationship, giving it a dedicated framework to discuss security matters.
The big question is how the group would not duplicate the efforts of the 77-year-old NATO, of which 23 EU countries are members.
European Commissioner for the Economy Valdis Dombrovskis said the European Security Council would “complement NATO” and not “compete with NATO”.
“We see the war in Ukraine has been turned into a drone war and Russia is producing millions of drones a year,” he said on Europe Today. “We need to strengthen our drone defence capabilities.”
Asked whether duplication could occur through the proposed Emergency Security Protocol or the European Security Council, a NATO official told Euronews they welcome European Allies and partners stepping up to do more in support of shared security.
“As again underlined at the Ankara Summit, NATO is the bedrock of our collective defence and we will continue to work closely with the EU in pursuit of our shared agenda – including to ramp up defence industrial production and to ensure continued support to Ukraine,” the official said.
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