President. – Good morning, dear colleagues. We have with us today former President of Finland Mr Sauli Niinistö to present his report 'Safer Together: Strengthening Europe's Civilian and Military Preparedness and Readiness'. President Niinistö, dear Sauli, welcome to the European Parliament.

The urgent message of your report could not be timelier. We are faced with the consequences of the ongoing invasion of Ukraine to our east, and the Middle East is still at boiling point. On the civilian front, we have witnessed floods across Europe over the last months, most recently in Spain, that took the lives of so many.

Europe is facing a new reality. We are dealing with geopolitical tensions that see little sign of easing, and we must be ready for any eventuality. All of this makes it more important than ever that our Union is prepared for this new, more uncertain future. Working together across borders and sectors to anticipate, prevent, withstand and respond to the significant threats that can lie ahead.

Now, we, as the European Parliament, and you will see this during the debate today, dear President, stand ready to play our part in order to ensure Europe is able to act when called upon.

So, dear Mr Niinistö, the European Parliament is eager to listen to your proposals on how we can make these ambitions a reality, how we can better protect our citizens and how we can build a more prepared, crisis-resistant Europe.

  Sauli Niinistö, Special Adviser to the President of the European Commission. – Madam President, honourable Members, thank you so much for giving this opportunity to me. Thank you for your kind invitation. It is an honour to be back here in Parliament after visiting many, many years ago.

As the EU's legislative Chamber, you clearly play a vital role in our joint effort to strengthen our preparedness and readiness. I hope to provide you with a clear picture of the challenges we face in this regard, but also what measures we could envisage with your help and support.

I started my work last spring with one very simple idea that seems to have been forgotten at times in the EU, namely: security is the foundation for everything we consider important. Without it, our open democratic societies would not be able to flourish.

The quest for security and peace was behind Europe's integration after the Second World War. When Russia rolled its tanks into Ukraine in February 2022, we were reminded once again that security is not a given. We need to invest in it and never take it for granted.

So, today, once again, it's a defining task for the EU to provide security to Europeans and be prepared for all the risks and threats we are facing. And the threats we face are numerous. They are not only hypothetical, but we are confronted with them here and now.

We see rising geopolitical tensions that are driven by Russia's aggression against Ukraine, while the rules-based global order is fragmenting and we see ever-worsening effects of the climate change. They were on display with the horrendous floodings in Valencia and elsewhere in Spain. I offer my condolences to the families of the victims.

As global warming continues, we need to anticipate its pervasive effects on our ecosystems and invest in climate adaptation and mitigation. Indeed, if we learn one lesson from the recent past, it is that we need to be realistic and clear-eyed about the risks we face. We need to prepare for the worst to prevent the worst from happening.

Another key lesson is that, in the middle of a severe crisis, we depend on the same critical functions, such us reliable critical infrastructure, provision of basic services and protection to population, security of supply and social cohesion.

Moreover, shocks in one sector of the economy often cascade to other sectors, and shocks to one Member State will have knock-on effects throughout the European Union. I therefore try to make it clear in my report that we share a single security in the EU. If one Member State loses its security, we all are in trouble.

Our deep integration also offers opportunities to work together and prepare ourselves for when a crisis hits one of us, or the Union as a whole. After all, Member States have made profound pledges of solidarity and mutual assistance to one another in the EU Treaties.

We are not building the EU preparedness from scratch. Especially in the past five years, as reaction to the pandemic, raging forest fires and Russia's war against Ukraine, the EU has already enacted several major pieces of legislation and introduced new tools. The EU came out stronger from these crises, but EU's action was initially about reaction and ad-hoc solutions. We need now to move from reaction to proactive preparedness and realise that geopolitical and climate developments are often outpacing our action.

The starting point for my report is, therefore, to address the full range of threats and challenges, including possible worst-case scenarios, such as prolonged drought, a new pandemic, a major cyberattack or sabotage causing a blackout of a vital network, or even armed aggression against one or more EU Member States.

Such crises are not as unthinkable as they once were, and they can happen very well at the same time. The central objective is to ensure the Union can continue to function under all circumstances. To achieve this, we need to shift to what I call in the report 'comprehensive preparedness'. This means the ability to bring all relevant actors and resources together to prepare for and address the most serious crises.

Crises do not happen in silos, so we can only prepare for them successfully by being able to act together. This is a shared responsibility of the various EU-level actors, including the Commission and Parliament, as well as the Member States. But importantly, it also involves the private sector, civil society and individual citizens. This is what a whole-of-government and a whole-of-society approach is about.

Strengthening civil-military cooperation is an integral part of this. Civilian and military crisis responders need to be able to operate seamlessly together, and this applies by extension also to the EU and NATO.

The forthcoming preparedness Union strategy should define, at EU level, the key societal and governmental functions for which continuity should be ensured under all circumstances. This applies to the basic needs of citizens, but also services provided by the government or private sector. Such a list is currently missing.

The report also explores the scope of a potential preparedness law. This could be a framework to agree on standards, targets and to streamline decision-making coordination and information-sharing. The key is to link EU and national levels.

Preparedness and security should be mainstreamed and designed into all EU legislation and future investment programmes. The aim is to ensure that our structures, coordination mechanisms and sectoral policies and legislation are fit for purpose but also fit well together. This enables the speed of action that is so vital when a crisis erupts.

Citizens and the private sector also play a major role in achieving a higher level of preparedness. There is much more we can achieve in this regard, as set out in the report. From strengthening household preparedness and alert systems to the media literacy of citizens, but also enhancing volunteering opportunities by leveraging EU programmes such as the EU Solidarity Corps and career opportunities in cybersecurity, defence industry or armed forces, for instance. The key here is to create a sense of ownership and participation among citizens in strengthening their own security. It builds cohesion and reinforces societal resilience.

This is at the heart of the Finnish national way of preparedness, in my view. It's not a model, a structure that we can transpose as such at the EU level. It's rather an attitude. It's done by the people. And they can only work well together when there's a high level of trust. The trust we need for the EU's preparedness must begin with the trust of citizens that their political community is worth protecting and defending. Trust is also the key to strengthening public-private partnership. I see a lot of opportunities here, too.

The lines between economy and security are blurring. The private sector realises all too well that they are exposed to supply chain shocks, cyberattacks, resource scarcities and economic security risks. The private sector can help by sharing their data on production rates and information on vulnerabilities and supply-chain dependencies. The EU side can help by extending resiliency policies and creating a stronger ability to absorb shocks, for example through a comprehensive EU stockpiling strategy.

Our open, democratic societies are based on the respect for the rights and liberties of individuals. We provide a broad, open space for people to be free, but at the same time, this open space is constantly used by malicious actors to hurt us and to undermine the trust of the people against the whole foundations of our democracies.

A key question is to make sure that we protect our values without letting them be weaponised against us. We need to deter malicious actors who are currently conducting hybrid campaigns against us with relative impunity. The report identifies a range of recommended actions in this regard, both to reduce our vulnerabilities and to upgrade our response.

To outsmart our adversaries, the report proposes to gradually strengthen EU intelligence cooperation towards a fully fledged EU service for intelligence cooperation. This has received a lot of attention in the media. I want to be clear: this is not about a CIA-style agency, but about better working together. We have to keep in mind that, in the EU, for decision-making, all the relevant up to date information is most crucial. Yet, we need to ensure that EU leadership has the best intelligence picture possible. That is the target. At the same time, for our security and military services.

This is only one example of how we can work together to outsmart our adversaries. But knowing what they are up to is not enough to deter them from aggression. Vladimir Putin made it clear a long time ago that he sees the West and the Western people as weak. We must change that perception.

The cooperative security model that the EU and NATO aspired to after the end of the Cold War was shattered in February 2022. Putin is moving Russia to a war economy footing and soliciting assistance from autocratic friends across Eurasia. Strengthening Europe's defence is therefore an urgent but also monumental task. After years of underinvestment, we must now scale up our industrial capacity, both to develop cutting-edge military capabilities and to mass produce battlefield goods like artillery, ammunition, and cost-efficient drones.

This also signals to the US, especially after the outcome of the presidential elections, that Europe is ready to share the burden and to take strategic responsibility. Only by showing that we do everything we can to prepare ourselves can we be a good partner for others. This should be more than words on paper. It needs to be backed up by new, joined-up investments to rationalise the fragmentation among Member States.

The multitude of different military platforms in Europe poses a problem not only for our competitiveness, but also our crisis preparedness and defence readiness. One key recommendation is to use the forthcoming white paper on the future of European defence to develop an EU defence capability package for the next decade. This is necessary both for our ability to support Ukraine for as long as needed, as well as to enhance our deterrence.

The Union should, furthermore, map out more clearly how it would assist a Member State that is the victim of armed aggression and to protect the Union as a whole. There has been silence concerning Article 42(7) of the Lisbon Treaty. This silence should now end. The EU is not a military actor in the sense that NATO is. But if a Member State of the EU and NATO would be attacked, this would have colossal implications for both organisations.

NATO remains the cornerstone for the collective defence of its members. But the defence of Europe is not only about military capabilities and headquarters. It involves a range of dual-use or civilian policies that become critical in such a moment, from defence industry, civil protection, humanitarian assistance, military mobility, medical support and economic resources to diplomacy, sanctions and so on.

We must define clearly, as part of our EU-NATO cooperation, how we would work together to support the attacked Member State, including with all the means that the EU has at its disposal.

Dear President, honourable Members, we are in a pivotal moment in European history. Military threats are as high as they have been since the end of the Cold War. Climate change is wreaking havoc through floods and forest fires. Strategic competition is seeping into every part of the globe and affecting all our policies.

A credible and comprehensive preparedness strategy will convince any potential adversary: you are not able to outsmart or outlast us because we are prepared. We need a clear commitment to strengthen the EU's preparedness across the board. I hope that we can count on the support of the Parliament in this respect. It sends an important message to our citizens: we will be safer together.

  President. – Thank you very much, President Niinistö, for those excellent points that you gave us.