Press conference on the Security and Defence Package

Speech by Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager

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Today we present a European Security and Defence package. It is composed of two elements: an action plan on military mobility and an EU cyber defence policy. With these two initiatives, the Commission is today stepping up its contribution to Europe's defence. 

The Russian war on Ukraine, and the recent cyber-attacks on strategic parts of our infrastructure, are wake-up calls for all of us. We must reinforce our ability to defend ourselves and our values. 

Our experience in addressing threats to our security, and more particularly the events of the past months, leave us with three main lessons learnt. They serve as foundation for the package we are presenting today. 

First – as external threats to our security get more and more complex, the defence dimension of our infrastructure and networks is crucial. The war has shown that important infrastructure and regulatory bottlenecks remain. They can slow down our reaction times and undermine our security. Our package today brings solutions to these bottlenecks. 

Second – the line between military and civilian is getting increasingly blurred. This dual-use of instruments and technologies means that we can do a lot more with what we already have. This package proposes actions to use civilian resources and investments in a way that also benefit European defence.  

Third - while defence remains the primary responsibility of Member States, there is a lot that we, as European Commission, can do to step-up our game. Especially through organising a more integrated and efficient coordination between countries. 

Let me start with the action plan on military mobility. 

We in Europe have free movement of goods, services, people and capital. But for good reasons, there is no free movement of the military. 

We need to make sure that when a crisis hits, Member States' military can move quickly. That bridges and roads used for everyday travel can support the heavy-duty vehicles of the army. That military trucks and containers can seamlessly cross the borders of our Union. This goes for military personnel, but also equipment. 

We have seen many times in recent months how equipment had to travel across Europe to be provided all the way to Ukraine.  So for military forces to make a real difference on the ground, they must move fast. They must not be blocked over bureaucracy or a lack of adapted infrastructure. That's what we aimed to solve back in 2018 with the first Military Mobility Action Plan. It has brought a lot of improvements, but we can still do more, for example by digitalising the procedures to make them faster and more reliable. Adina (Commissioner Valean) will of course say more.

The nature of threats changed over the last decades. We see an increasing number of malicious actions in cyberspace coming from both state and non-state actors. 

So today, there is no European defence without cyber defence. That's why our second proposal, the EU cyber defence policy, steps-up our ability to protect both our military and civilian assets from cyberattacks. 

We have seen it with the Russian attack on Viasat satellites. Those satellites provide high-speed broadband to both commercial and military customers. So obviously, one can deeply affect military forces by attacking civilian infrastructure. 

The same can be said about 5G networks. Their security is of utmost importance, also from a defence perspective. So today, almost three years after we adopted the 5G toolbox, we are urging those Member States that have not yet imposed restrictions on high-risk suppliers do to so without delay. Time lost can increase the vulnerabilities in our networks, and determined action is needed.

The cyber defence policy we present today puts forward new instruments. They will reinforce our collective ability to address cyber threats, from early detection of possible attacks to deterring future threats. We propose to increase cooperation on three main fronts. Cooperation between Member States' military, cooperation between civil and military, and cooperation between private and public sectors. 

Our proposal also includes an important dimension on skills, since our capacity to fight cyberthreats relies on better skilled people. 

Last but not least, threats to our security do not stop at our borders. Neither should our responses. That's why both proposals today include provisions to step-up our cooperation with NATO and partner countries, those that are like-minded and in our neighbourhood.

I will now leave the floor to my colleagues. 

Thank you. 

Speech by High Representative/Vice-President Josep Borrell

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Good morning, thank you to all of you, thank you Margrethe [Vestager, Executive Vice-President for a Europe Fit for the Digital Age] for your introduction and your remarks.  

As you said, the security environment in Europe has changed dramatically.  

Since last February, the war is back at our borders and the Russian aggression against Ukraine is undermining peace [and] the international rules-based system globally. But it affects us.  

And we have to adapt our defence policies to this new environment. [And] that is a good occasion to wear my double hat: the hat of the Vice-President of the Commission, and the [one for] High Representative for Security and Defence. And maybe a third one: the [Head] of the European Defence Agency (EDA) that is going to play an important role in the development of these policies. 

First, about military mobility and our second Military Mobility Action Plan.  

You know that there is no road for military vehicles – there is not a specific road, they use the same roads. 

But look at which is the weight of a Leopard tank, which is the length of a train to transport military warfare. And then, you could imagine, easily, that not all infrastructures are ready to support the weight and the length of the military warfare.  

We need to adapt our mobility system for our troops to be able to transport and deploy quickly all their military capacities. This is critical for our defence: the capacity, the ability to move troops and equipment quickly from one side of the European Union to the other side of the European Union; from the West to the East – mainly -, to our external borders; but also, beyond our external borders when we deploy our military missions around the world. This requires to make bridges, tunnels and roads, and trains ready to transport our military capacities. Our military support to Ukraine has shown clearly that this matters a lot.

This “Action Plan” aims to reduce the delays to transport military capacity with 30 actions, enabling to move safer and quicker, ranging from transport infrastructure, regulatory issues, preparedness, and resilience. 

Let me focus on the elements of that plan that fall under my responsibility as High Representative and Head of the [European] Defence Agency.  

First, we have to update and expand the scope of military requirements. This, for example, includes looking into the Fuel Supply Chain. We need to be sure that there is a fuel supply chain from one side of Europe to the other side of Europe. Our [EU] Military Staff expertise will be key in designing this chain of fuel supply.

Second, the European Defence Agency will take forward the work on cross-border movement permissions and custom formalities, establishing a network for smart logistics. With Member States, we will address gaps in strategic lift capacity to ensure that we are able to transport large-scale forces at short notice.

Third, we have to work closer with our partners. The first one, NATO. NATO's cooperation has to be intensified, but also with partners like Ukraine and Moldova. We have to share best practices with regional partners, with the Western Balkans. We have to be ready to prepare force deployment in this region, and we will address it with our transatlantic partners in regular dialogues. 

From this point of view, I am happy to announce that the United Kingdom will join us on a Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) project on military mobility.  

Second, on Cyber Defence. 

Cyberspace is the new strategic domain. It is the place of geostrategic competition, and it will become a battlefield. But cyberspace has no limits: where is the space of the cyberspace? Everywhere. There [are] no borders. So, to make the difference between the internal and external, does not make a lot of sense, because there is no line between one thing and the other. 

But, in any case, cyber war and cyber-attacks have become an integral part of modern warfare.  

The Russian aggression against Ukraine is being accompanied by repeated cyber-attacks, not only against Ukraine, but also against us and against our partner countries. Remember, that before the war launched, a big cyber-attack preceded the bombing of Kyiv.

We are proposing [actions] to increase our ability to prevent, detect, deter the cyber-attacks and defend ourselves against them. We are following the same lines, the same verbs that we use in the Strategic Compass on Security and Defence: to act together for a stronger EU cyber defence, secure our defence ecosystem, invest in better cyber defence capabilities, and partner to address common challenges.  

There is one common thread: better and stronger cooperation between the military and the civilians.

The [European] Commission is doing a lot on the civilian side of cyber defence - the military also. We have to link these two sides.  

We must create the structures and mechanisms for cooperation among military actors to improve the situational awareness, the detection, the preparedness, and response.  

That is why we are proposing, in this plan, to create an EU Cyber Defence Coordination Centre. It would act as a central node to collect, analyse and distribute cyber defence information.  

Also, [we will establish] an operational network of Military Computer Emergency Response Teams with the European Defence Agency acting as secretariat. 

[We will also] expand our Cyber Rapid Reaction Teams and cyber defence exercises.  

Similarly, we need to address the gaps in the cyber defence workforce. We need to train, educate, and do exercises with the people that will work in these new battlefields. Because, certainly, we need to increase the number of people ready to participate in this kind of war, knowing that the classical warfare, the classical training of a soldier does not fit anymore in this new dimension of the war. 

And we will step up our work in support of cyber defence capacity building of our partners also. 

We are doing that through the European Peace Facility, supporting Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova, and we are looking to further advance with others, in particular the Western Balkans, where some countries – like, for example, Albania – are suffering from cyber-attacks.  

Member States will lead the implementation of this plan. But we have the instruments and initiatives that can make a difference.  

[We are] presenting these concrete solutions, delivering on commitments and ambitions that we already announced when we approved the Strategic Compass. 

I am sure this will make the European Union a stronger global security and defence actor. 

I want to thank my colleagues from the Commission for the good cooperation between the civilian and military side of our capacities. 

Speech by Commissioner Vălean 

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‘Military mobility' allows our armed forces and their equipment to move around the EU with ease. This is not as straightforward as it might sound – roads, bridges, railway tracks or some of our ports are not necessarily designed to accommodate such heavy weights, or very large equipment.

EU Member States' military personnel need to be able to respond quickly and at sufficient scale to any crises at EU's external borders or beyond, making military mobility critical for our security and resilience. It is an additional deterrent.

Russia's military aggression against Ukraine has unfortunately confirmed that we need to substantially improve the military mobility of our armed forces – and urgently.

We need to continue improving the capacity of transport infrastructure, such as roads, bridges, and rail tracks. We also need to streamline and harmonise complex, lengthy and diverging national rules, such as those on dangerous goods, customs, VAT and cross-border permissions.

The new Action Plan opens a new chapter of work, building on the progress made since we first launched our military mobility initiative in 2017.

It also draws lessons from the changed strategic and geopolitical context.

It enlarges the scope of our joint efforts and proposes additional measures to improve military mobility, to shorten reaction times, and to ensure secure and resilient transport infrastructure and capabilities.

We will assess [in 2023], the extent to which today's physical transport infrastructure meets military requirements, and what the current gaps are. We will carry out the assessment together with the EEAS, and in consultation with NATO. The findings will help us to prioritise infrastructure for development, and to allocate funding at EU level appropriately. They will also help us to accelerate the expansion of dual-use infrastructure and ensure that our transport network is resilient.

Aircraft configuration is another route to resilience, and a very concrete example of how small changes can have an impact. If civil and military aircraft use the same spare parts, military planes should be able to use those certified for civilian ones. Today, there is too much duplication between the two certification systems. A pilot project will be launched in 2023 to simplify processes and improve synergies.

Today we are already co-funding dual-use transport infrastructure projects, through our Connecting Europe Facility. This has a dedicated military mobility budget of 1.69 billion euro for 2021-2027.

In April 2022, the Commission selected 22 dual-use projects for funding under the 1st call for proposals. Together, these projects are receiving 339 million euro in EU funding. Projects include railway infrastructure upgrades to allow the passage of larger and heavier trains, as well as work to increase port and airport capacity and strengthen road bridges.

In the current geopolitical context, we need to accelerate efforts to improve military mobility, and we are doing so. Under the second CEF call for proposals, we received 63 project submissions requesting more than 1 billion euro in funding. We will announce which projects have been selected in December 2022, but we will also look into further increasing the CEF military mobility budget when we carry out the mid-term review of the multi-annual financial perspectives (MFF).

Finally, our proposal to revise the Trans-European Transport Network Regulation supports this renewed drive to strengthen military mobility. For example, we have proposed:

• a requirement to use the P400 loading gauge along the railway lines that are part of the TEN-T so that containers can be carried on standard wagons;
• that Member States building new TEN-T railway lines do so using a standard European track gauge of 1 435 mm. This will improve interoperability and resilience along the TEN-T.

We have also extended four European Transport Corridors into Ukraine, and one of them into Moldova.

Thank you.