COPENHAGEN – Drone incursions have pushed European leaders to confront the vulnerability of the bloc’s eastern flank, with defence ministers now poised to play a bigger role in shaping collective security.
A four-hour discussion on defence on Wednesday left little time for EU leaders to address other pressing questions – including how to turn immobilised Russian assets into loans for Ukraine and how to advance Kyiv’s EU membership bid. But leaders left Christiansborg Castle with a clearer sense of their shared security threats, diplomats with knowledge of the meeting told Euractiv.
At the informal European Council summit, talks focused on flagship defence projects: the Eastern Flank Watch, and a proposed “drone wall.”
“I think we have had good discussions today, and now we are ready to take the next steps,” Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of Denmark said at a press conference. One Council official added, “Even the southern countries recognise that the most acute threat right now is coming from the east and that’s why we have to work on those.”
António Costa, the European Council president, framed the challenge more broadly and called for a “360-degree approach” to defence.
We need to “look at our external borders as our common borders, in the east, in the north, in the south, in the west,” he said. “For everybody, the main threat we are facing now comes from Russia, and especially on the Eastern flank.”
Still, persuading Mediterranean electorates of the urgency of the eastern threat may prove difficult. In March, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain downplayed fears of an immediate Russian threat to his own country. “Our threat is not Russia bringing its troops across the Pyrenees,” he said.
Heading into Wednesday’s summit, Sanchez dodged the question, while Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy warned that ignoring the southern flank would risk undermining the bloc’s effectiveness.
To sweeten the deal, leaders are looking for ways to bring southern European industries more directly into defence projects, diplomats told Euractiv.
One diplomat warned that southern countries risk missing a chance to bolster their own defence manufacturing bases if front-line states choose to keep industrial capacity closer to home.
Some signs of engagement are already visible. Italy and Portugal are receiving significant amounts from the EU’s SAFE defence loans instrument, while Spain is participating in a joint fighter jet and drones project with France and Germany.
Defence ministers ‘junior’ no more
Though the summit ended without written conclusions, member states agreed to give the bloc’s defence ministers more authority in shaping security policy.
Costa said ministers would meet more often and carry more weight between leaders’ summits, rather than serving more as a “junior meeting of the Minister of Foreign Affairs Council.” “What we need now is to give more autonomy, because we need to engage more and more our defence ministers at European level,” he said.
The plan is not to create a new format, but to expand the existing one, Euractiv understands. Currently, defence ministers meet under the Foreign Affairs Council, headed by the bloc’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas.
“The centre of gravity is with the defence ministers,” one council official said, while noting that the European Commission would continue to drive industrial aspects of defence policy. The point, the official added, is to “create a European spirit in the field of defence.”
One unresolved question is the role of Andrius Kubilius, the EU’s first defence commissioner. Neither Council nor Commission officials could say how his position would fit into the new arrangements.
(cp, cz)
