Source: European Parliament
In an environment of growing and complex threats, preparedness and resilience have assumed significance for the EU from both a military and civilian perspective. In early 2024, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen commissioned a report, under the authorship of former Finnish President Sauli Niinistö in his capacity as her special advisor, on how to enhance Europe’s civilian and defence preparedness. The report, unveiled in October 2024, proposes ways in which preparedness can ‘become part of the underlying logic of all our actions and address the full spectrum of threats and risks’, in the words of von der Leyen. It anticipated the adoption, on 26 March 2025, of a ‘Preparedness Union Strategy’ aiming to build resilience to new threats and build a ‘whole-of-society’ approach in EU security. ‘Whole-of-society’ or ‘total defence’ approaches are not a new concept and are key to preparedness. They combine a country’s armed forces, civilian actors and capabilities, as well as the general population, as a way to defend against a broad spectrum of security threats and to boost resilience. They involve policies that go beyond traditional defence and tend to engage actors beyond the military sphere. They also have important budgetary, institutional and economic dimensions. In this spirit, the Preparedness Union Strategy’s 30 actions concern hospitals, schools, transport, telecommunications, climate adaptation and civil-military relations. The Niinistö report and the Preparedness Union Strategy were presented to the European Parliament in November 2024 and April 2025 respectively. In its 2024 annual report on the implementation of the common security and defence policy, Parliament welcomes efforts to strengthen Europe’s civil and military preparedness and readiness, and endorses the Commission’s whole-of-society approach to resilience, recognising the role of citizens in crisis preparedness and response.