The European Union has not done enough to boost its own arms production capacities in light of geopolitical threats, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Friday.
Von der Leyen cited the war between Russia and Ukraine as a particular issue but also highlighted conflicts and flashpoints further afield around the globe.
“Protecting Europe is first and foremost Europe’s duty. And while NATO must remain the center of our collective defense, we need a much stronger European pillar,” von der Leyen said.“We must have in mind a systemic overhaul of Europe’s defense. This is why I will appoint a fully-fledged Defense Commissioner in the next Commission. This is Europe’s strategic responsibility.”
Speaking at the GLOBSEC forum, a security conference in Prague, von der Leyen called the idea that Europe had been doing enough to defend itself, economically or militarily, at the beginning of this decade an “illusion,” adding that the second half of the 2020s will be “high-risk.”
Addressing the point of cooperation with the United States, von der Leyen said that America had again “stood up for the freedom of all Europeans.”
She said that the continent had “overcome its long-standing unwillingness to spend enough on its own defense” but that it needed to go further, and that the EU “needs to have the means to defend and protect ourselves and deter any possible adversaries.”
Discussing issues beyond Europe’s borders, she cited war in the Middle East and tensions in the Far East as contributing to the “high risk” nature of the rest of the decade, along with climate change causing the “desertification of whole regions.”
“We Europeans must be on guard. We must refocus our attention on the security dimension of everything we do. We must think about our Union as intrinsically a security project,” she said.
Von der Leyen said some politicians were “muddying the waters” over Ukraine and alleged they blame the war “not on Putin’s lust for power but on Ukraine’s thirst for freedom.”
“Would you ever blame Hungarians for the Soviet invasion of 1956? Would you ever blame Czechs for the Soviet repression of 1968?” she asked.
“The answer to these questions is very clear: The Kremlin’s behavior was illegal and atrocious back then. And the Kremlin’s behavior is illegal and atrocious today.”
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who currently holds the rotating six-month EU Council presidency, spent five days in Moscow in July and met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a move that angered many in Brussels.
Von der Leyen went on to say that some outside Europe were “pre-occupied only with the end of fighting.”
She said that her position was that any peace settlement must include “the integration of Ukraine” in the European Union.
Former President Donald Trump has on several occasions promised to end the conflict should he win the presidential election in November and most recently warned that the current violence in the Kursk region of Russia could spark a third world war.
