Speech by Commissioner Lahbib at the North Atlantic Council

Let's take a quick look at today's reality.

A drone entering our airspace. Cyberattacks on our hospitals. Disinformation targeting our elections. Sabotage plots across our Union. These acts are not random. They are deliberate, and they are happening on our soil. Their aim is to spread fear, divide us, and weaken our support for Ukraine. We are not at war, but we are not at peace either.

This grey zone puts the infrastructure we rely on every day on the frontline. Our airports, our power grids, our ports. So we must protect them like the frontline. We have to move faster than the threat, see it coming, and be ready when it arrives. That is the challenge for all of us in this room.

In the coming weeks, President Von der Leyen will present our European Security Strategy that she announced during her State of the Union speech. We are building a new security mindset across Europe to shape how we make policy, where we invest, and how we prepare.

I will focus on two areas today: our European Preparedness Strategy and how we are bringing civilian and defence readiness closer together, including with NATO.

Today we must be ready both on the frontline and on the home front. Russia has brought war back to our continent, disinformation is eroding public trust, climate shocks are hitting harder, and these threats overlap.

This summer the wildfire I saw in La Gironde threatened critical infrastructure and military assets. It triggered the largest evacuation in France since the Second World War.

Crises do not always come one by one. They can hit the same place at the same time and spread fast from one sector to the next. That is why we prepare for all hazards at once.

Reacting after a crisis hits is no longer enough. That is why last year we launched our EU Preparedness Strategy. It gets the whole of society involved and its central idea is simple: anticipate earlier, prepare better, act faster.