European Commission - Speech [Check Against Delivery] Speech by Commissioner Lahbib at the Resilient Europe Conference Prague, 22 October 2026 When you arrived today, I hope you looked up at the roof of this palace. Four stone statues stand along the top. They represent the four elements: fire, water, air, and earth. This palace was built three hundred years ago for Count Kaiserstein, the military commander of Prague...
European Commission - Speech [Check Against Delivery] Speech by Commissioner Lahbib at the Resilient Europe Conference Prague, 22 October 2026 When you arrived today, I hope you looked up at the roof of this palace. Four stone statues stand along the top. They represent the four elements: fire, water, air, and earth. This palace was built three hundred years ago for Count Kaiserstein, the military commander of Prague. His job was to keep this city safe, and on his roof he placed the forces that no army could ever command. Today, those four statues read like a risk assessment. Fire, in the forests of Bohemian Switzerland. Water, in the rivers that burst their banks two years ago. Air, where drones now threaten our airports. And earth, our continent, warming faster than any other. Keeping a city safe now takes far more than one commander. It takes firefighters, rescuers, doctors, mayors, and volunteers. It takes people like you. You remember September 2024. Rivers flooded across Czechia. Thousands of people had to leave their homes. Many of you worked around the clock. You know from experience: when the water starts rising, it is too late to start preparing. That is why we are here today to make sure Europe is ready before the next alarm sounds. This is one of Europe's most urgent priorities, and it has been at the heart of my work since my first day as Commissioner. Europe faces growing threats on every front. Floods and wildfires, war on our borders, hybrid and cyber-attacks, sabotage, health emergencies, and who knows what Artificial Intelligence will bring. One crisis can quickly jump across sectors. A cyberattack can bring down a hospital. A flood can cut off electricity and drinking water. Last year in Spain and Portugal, the power went out for millions of people. Trains stopped and hospitals switched to backup generators. Conflicts are spreading and instability in Europe's neighbourhood is growing. Take the Middle East. That war has devastated communities and driven millions from their homes, and the shockwaves reach every European kitchen, through higher food and energy prices. Russia's war against Ukraine is now in its fifth year, and the threat is moving closer to home. Hybrid attacks are hitting EU countries. This summer, a drone carrying explosives was discovered at Leipzig airport, not far from the Czech border. Nature is raising the stakes too. Europe is warming twice as fast as the global average. This summer was the hottest ever recorded in western Europe. Wildfires have become infernos that rage in several places at the same time, often close to major cities, like in Bordeaux and Madrid this summer. In 2022, fires tore through Bohemian Switzerland National Park. Over 6,000 Czech firefighters were mobilised. Some of you were among them. When you called, Europe answered. Firefighting aircraft arrived from Italy and Sweden, with helicopters from neighbouring countries. That is European solidarity in action. When one country is overwhelmed, Europeans cross borders to help neighbours. At the other extreme, we face devastating floods, as Czechia and its central European neighbours experienced in September 2024. Over the past five years, extreme weather has cost Europe roughly €45 billion a year. Money that could have gone to schools, hospitals, and roads. These threats are changing faster than our systems, so we must get ahead of them and prepare in advance. That is the idea behind our EU Preparedness Strategy. Anticipating and preparing before the alarm bells sound. To do that, we need to change our mindset and build a culture of readiness across our continent. The principle is simple: when a crisis strikes, society must keep running. The lights stay on, hospitals keep treating patients, medicines remain available. People must know what supplies to keep at home and where to find information they can trust. When civilian emergency services are overwhelmed, the military is ready to step in. That brings me to ‘preparedness by design'. Before we spend a euro or design a new policy, we ask two questions: does this make Europe better prepared? And will it still work under pressure? We are already applying this to our current EU budget. In our proposal for the next long-term budget, we want preparedness and security hard-wired into every major programme. What does this look like in practice? Allow me to focus on three areas. First, we need a clear picture of what is coming. We will soon publish our first Comprehensive Risk and Threat Assessment. For the first time, we will see security threats, natural hazards, health emergencies, and technological risks on one map. We are working with Member States on EU Minimum Preparedness Requirements. Czechia does not face the same risks as Finland or Spain, but Europe should have a basic level of protection. From the hospital room to the kitchen tap, essential services must keep running in a crisis. Second, we need essential supplies ready before they are needed. During the pandemic, we saw European countries bidding against each other for the same masks. Last year, we launched our EU Stockpiling and Medical Countermeasures Strategies, so we don't see that again. That means stocks of critical medicines and medical equipment and vaccines, treatments, and tests developed faster when the next health crisis arrives. Third, we must get ahead of the growing threat from wildfires and heatwaves. Earlier this year, we adopted a European approach to wildfires that covers every stage, from prevention to response and recovery. Last month, President von der Leyen announced a new advisory group of experienced firefighters and crisis managers and a European plan to prepare for heatwaves. We need to learn from those who have fought the fires and led the evacuations and coordinated the emergency response. People like you. Even the best emergency services cannot do this alone. Preparedness is about all of us: businesses, communities and citizens, we are all links in the chain. Count Kaiserstein was a soldier. Today keeping a city safe means civilians and soldiers working hand in hand. We must strengthen cooperation between civil and military authorities, especially for chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear threats. When an emergency grows too big for civilian responders, everyone must know who is in charge and who to call. We cannot work that out in the middle of a crisis. We also need businesses at the table. They produce and transport many of the supplies we depend on in a crisis. We are setting up a new taskforce with industry, from securing supplies to producing equipment for civilian and military use. We need citizens to be ready too. I want to congratulate Czechia on your 72-hour preparedness guide. It tells people what to do if the power goes out or the taps run dry. This is exactly the kind of preparedness we need across Europe. Being ready gives people confidence and peace of mind. We know another crisis will come. But we do not know where or when. The 2024 floods taught us what works: early warnings, clear communication, and strong local preparedness. Let's take those lessons to every corner of Europe. Picture Europe ten years from now… A girl in Brno learns at school what to do when the siren sounds, the same way she learns to swim. A family in Ostrava keeps a 72-hour bag by the door, as naturally as a first-aid kit in the car. A young firefighter from Liberec trains with colleagues from Portugal and Greece. And when the water rises again, every hospital and every town hall knows exactly what to do. We need to make preparedness second nature for everyone across our continent. That is why the work of the Centre for an Informed Society is so important. You bring governments, businesses, and civil society together to build that Europe. Three hundred years ago, Count Kaiserstein put fire, water, air and earth on his roof. We will never control those forces, but we can be ready for them. That is what preparedness means, not just knowing what could go wrong, but knowing what to do before it does. SPEECH/26/2239 <@rel_link@>
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