Original text
European Commission - Speech [Check Against Delivery] Keynote speech by Commissioner Kubilius at the event "European Union Defence Initiatives: The Eastern Flank within a 360° Security Approach" Brussels, 13 May 2026 Good morning, Thank you Ambassador, We are living in the real environment of 360 degrees of challenges to our security. The Iran war brings real threats to our Southern and Mediterranean Flank countries,...
European Commission - Speech [Check Against Delivery] Keynote speech by Commissioner Kubilius at the event "European Union Defence Initiatives: The Eastern Flank within a 360° Security Approach" Brussels, 13 May 2026 Good morning, Thank you Ambassador, We are living in the real environment of 360 degrees of challenges to our security. The Iran war brings real threats to our Southern and Mediterranean Flank countries, it touches also us with challenges of supply of weapons. At the same time Russia continues its war against Ukraine and our transatlantic partners are asking us to take primary responsibility for the conventional defence of Europe. In such an environment the Eastern Flank plays a very important and very special role. Usually we call the Eastern Flank region a frontier region: the countries are ready to defend not only their own security, they are ready to defend the whole European Union. Against Russia threats. That is why they deserve the solidarity of the whole European Union and they deserve solidarity investment into their defence capabilities and into mitigation of the negative consequences of the “frontier status” to their economic and social development. That is what the Commission is doing: it is looking for possibilities to assist this region with the Eastern Flank Watch flagship project and with other initiatives. But, in my view, the role of the region is much broader and the Eastern Flank region needs to have by itself a 360 degrees approach to challenges which the region needs to tackle, and in such a way to help the whole of Europe. I see four most important topics, where the Eastern Flank region needs to play a strategic role, produce strategic ideas and be visible with those ideas for the benefit of the region and the whole of the European Union. Those four topics are: first, future of the European Defence Architecture; second, European Defence Industry; third, policy towards Ukraine and the last one: policy towards Russia. On EU Defence Architecture What we are facing now is the process of transformation of Transatlantic collective defence of Europe into the European collective defence of Europe. It is a major tectonic shift in European security architecture, which happens once in 100 years. It would be a mistake if the Eastern Flank region would not be intellectually active in presenting its own ideas on what this new European collective defence architecture needs to look like. Because security of the Eastern Flank region is especially and absolutely dependent on collective defence and deterrence power. This means that the Eastern Flank needs to be very much intellectually visible in all the discussions about the future of European defence architecture: about the operationalization of TEU Article 42.7, about the European pillar of NATO, about Europeanization of NATO and its headquarters, about European Defence Union and even about a European Security Council – for the collective political leadership of European defence architecture. The Eastern Flank region needs to understand that looking into the future, things in European defence will not stay as they were up till now. Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen during her recent speech to the Ambassadors' Conference gave a very clear indication – that established doctrines, institutions and decision making for EU common foreign and security policy are not fit for purpose anymore. Because of immense geopolitical changes and challenges. German Foreign Affairs Minister Johann Wadephul recently presented, what I call, the German vision on how those doctrines, institutions and decision making processes need to be changed. Where is the similar vision from the Eastern Flank countries? On Defence Industry and Capabilities The Eastern Flank region should be very much concerned about European defence industry, since according to publicly available data Russia still very heavily outproduces Europe: in production of cruise and ballistic missiles, different types of drones, tanks, infantry vehicles, artillery ammunition and so on. Such a difference of production numbers leaves Europe without one of the most important instruments of deterrence and creates permanent temptation for Putin to test Europe. The Eastern Flank needs to be among the most active players in EU defence industrial policy development with a very clear strategic question: how to outproduce Russia? And how to build European defence capabilities, when after the war in Iran USA weapon production will be used only for USA needs because they need to replenish their stockpiles (up till now 40% of European weapons were procured in the USA); Europe will need to be ready to replace strategic enablers, which until now were provided mainly by the USA; Europe also needs to produce enough weapons, not only for its own needs, but also for the needs of Ukraine. For all of these challenges, the Eastern Flank needs to actively participate to find proper European answers. Including how to create an 80,000 European Rapid Reaction Force, if similar American forces would be withdrawn towards other regions. All those goals demand very agile actions from the whole of Europe. But “old Europe” and its defence industry is very slow in ramping up its production. This is a big difference compared to the Ukraine defence industry, which during 4 years of war managed to increase its defence production by 50 times: from 1 billion euro production value in 2022, up to 50 billion euro in 2026. The Eastern Flank region has the strongest interest in Europe being able to outproduce Russia, because that is the strongest deterrence against Russian aggression. And the Eastern Flank is the closest region to Ukraine. That is why the Eastern Flank region should be able to become a real region for European expansion of Ukraine's defence industry capabilities and its ability to ramp up production. Later on such an Ukrainian industrial expansion would be able to move from the Eastern Flank region into the European Defence Single Market. That is why the Eastern Flank should be among the strongest supporters of the development of the European Defence Single Market. That is how the powerful “Europe's Arsenal” can be created. And that is the way how Russia can be outproduced. And deterred. That is what only the Eastern Flank can achieve. On Ukraine Ukraine is defending the whole of Europe. And first of all, Ukraine is defending the Eastern Flank region. That is why the Eastern Flank region is the strongest supporter of Ukraine's defence. But Eastern Flank support to the defence of Ukraine is not enough. That is why the Eastern Flank region needs to look how to make support of the whole EU for the defence of Ukraine bigger in scale and more efficient. There are new opportunities for that, especially when the European Union, for the first time in history, is providing Ukraine with a special "Ukraine support loan" of EUR 60 billion for Ukraine's defence. That is why the Eastern Flank region needs to push for change in the designation of European assistance - it should shift from the goal “to support Ukraine as long as it takes” (support of “survival” of Ukraine) towards the goal “to support Ukraine's Prevailing Plan”, which would allow Ukraine to prevail on frontlines and this is the only way to implement the formula “peace through strength”. And second question which the Eastern Flank needs to raise in all European defence forums: how to be ready to defend Europe against Russian aggression? Who can withstand the Russian battle tested army, which is able to use millions of drones? In the Eastern Flank, in the whole of the EU and probably in a majority of NATO countries nobody has such an experience. Only Ukraine has. That is why the Eastern Flank should be the strongest promoter of the integration of Ukraine's and Europe's defence capabilities. And that should be done with high urgency. That is why if it would appear that NATO membership for Ukraine is still not available, and membership of the EU will take a longer period of time, the Eastern Flank should push for Ukraine's membership of the European Defence Union. That is why the creation of a European Defence Union cannot be postponed. And that needs to be the clear geopolitical priority for the Eastern Flank, which should be realized during the Lithuanian Presidency in the first half of 2027. On Russia The Eastern Flank has a strategic interest not to live under the permanent threat of authoritarian and aggressive Russia. Russia of Putin. We have a strong security interest to live next to a possibly normal, non-aggressive Russia. That is why the Eastern Flank needs to push Europe towards a proper long term strategy on Russia. A long term strategy towards Russia is a different issue from how Europe needs to engage Putin, pushing him for peace negotiations with Ukraine now. Today we see very clear and, I would say, dangerous signals, that not only the US administration but also some national leaders in Europe have a temptation to normalize long term relations with Putin and Putin's Russia. The Eastern Flank needs to voice a very clear long term strategy: the possibility for normalization of relations with Russia can be established only if Russia returns to normality. The Eastern Flank needs to push Europe for a strategy on Russia – how to help Russia to transform itself back into such kind of a normal state. Maybe it will never happen. But an attempt to implement such a strategy would be an effective prevention of the temptation to seek normalisation of relations with Putin without any conditionality. Such a strategy towards Russia should have two very clear basic principles. The first – the example of the success of Ukraine can inspire Russian people to seek the transformation of Russia back to normality; the success of Ukraine can be created by EU assistance to Ukraine: for Ukraine to prevail and to its integration into the EU. The second principle – the EU promises to normalize relations with Russia only if Russia transforms itself back to normality. Such a promise of conditional normalization of relations with the EU could create the possibility for Russian people to enjoy the perspectives of what the late Alexey Navalny called "the beautiful Russia of the future". Nobody else would be able to develop such an EU long term strategy towards Russia, only the Eastern Flank countries. Because for us normalization of relations with Putin is the biggest threat. *** This is the 360 degrees agenda for the Eastern Flank. To have an ambition to influence defence transformations in Europe. And to influence transformations in Russia. Back to normality. It's not a small ambition. But we learned the lesson: if we are not ambitious, we suffer, and then after some time European leaders are apologizing for the whole of Europe that some time ago they were not listening to our warnings about forthcoming threats. Threats from Russia. Now we need to be ambitious. And smart. And able to concentrate not only on ourselves, but also on 360 degrees challenges. SPEECH/26/1073 Related media Participation of Andrius Kubilius, European Commissioner, in the Conference “European Union Defence Initiatives: The Eastern Flank within a 360° Security Approach”
Speech Brief