Keynote speech by Commissioner Kubilius in the Business Europe event “Security, Resilience and Competitiveness: Europe's Industrial Agenda for a New Geopolitical Era”

First a big thank-you to Business Europe for organising this important event. Thank you for putting the defence of Europe on your agenda today and in your important position paper.

I will not say anything new here: defence readiness is a clear strategic priority for the EU. And we know  why. To achieve defence readiness on the European continent we have NATO, Member States and European Union.

And the European Union brings production power, industrial power. And for that industrial power, we depend on you, Europe's businesses and industry.

I always say that defence readiness has 3 pillars:

Last week, in her State of the Union speech, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen spoke about institutional defence readiness, but also about other pillars of our defence readiness: a European Security Council, an Emergency Security Protocol, anti-hybrid playbook, a special instrument for strategic enablers, etc.

A big new defence agenda is in front of us.

But today let me discuss in more detail what I call the  the material defence readiness we build with you, the businesses of Europe.

In the last two years we have realized substantial achievements in material defence readiness.

But we also have major “non-achievements” in front of us, which we need to overcome in the nearest future. Some of these “non-achievements” are very closely linked with the development of European defence industry. And they demand very practical steps which all of us – EU institutions, Member States and industry – need to implement with urgency.

I will try to name some of those practical issues, on which we are working and shall work intensively in the nearest future: