Europe’s grim reality, a defence commissioner and Malta

The European Union’s largest ever expansion 20 years ago was hailed as the start of peaceful unity in a continent just emerging from the Cold War.

The feeling of a new beginning for Europe was captured in the words of then Austrian chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel: “For us Austrians, who grew up with a border secured by barbed wire, minefields and watchtowers, from an internal point of view the 21st century has in many ways only just begun. It’s what we have dreamed of.”

Schüssel spoke in Athens on 16 April 2003 when 10 new countries, including Malta, signed the EU accession treaty. They formally joined the bloc a year later.

Eight of the new member states were former Communist countries that only a decade earlier stood on the opposite side of the Iron Curtain that split the continent.

Today, the EU’s ‘peaceful unity’ remains intact despite tensions between the member states but never as now has the bloc faced a full-blown war in its immediate neighbourhood.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 shattered the peace and stability Europe had come to cherish, prompting EU leaders to start speaking the language of war.

“We have to be prepared for anything,” European Parliament President Roberta Metsola told Romania’s television news channel Digi24 in March last year as Vladimir Putin threatened to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.

In January, this year German defence minister Boris Pistorius warned that Russia could be ready for military aggression against an EU country or NATO member “within five to eight years” from now.

It is this “grim reality” that has conditioned European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to give defence and security a very high priority in the new Brussels executive, according to former deputy commander of the Armed Forces of Malta, Col David P. Attard.

For the first time, an EU commissioner will be responsible for a specific portfolio for defence and space.

In her mission letter to Andrius Kubilius, the commissioner-designate, Von der Leyen wrote: “The rising and complex nature of threats facing Europe have pointed to the need for Europe to take the next step on defence. We need to reflect on the future European security architecture, and we need to invest in our own security and defence.”

Attard says Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a rude awakening for Europe.

“The defence of the continent has today become most pressing and EU member states must have resources for their defence in order to deter and stop any other State or non-state actor from directing any aggression against one or more EU countries,” he says.

Although the EU is not a collective defence organisation, Attard believes there is much that it can do to strengthen defence resources by focusing on areas such as the production, research and development of military hardware and equipment, being self-sustaining in logistics, creating the necessary defence support infrastructure and building the necessary military transit corridors across the continent.

“There is the need to rebuild the indigenous European defence industry to enable EU member states to handle any long-term military aggression and long-term war, such as Ukraine is experiencing right now,” he says.

A long and difficult mandate

This logic is reflected in Von der Leyen’s mission letter to Kubilius, which calls for a White Paper on the Future of European Defence in the first 100 days of the mandate. The Brussels chief also laid out key aspects of the mandate, including strengthening military mobility, creating a single market for defence products and services, foster joint procurement of European equipment, pursue further standardisation and harmonisation of defence assets, and propose defence projects of common European interest, including a European air shield and cyber defence.

Fulfilling this mandate will not be an easy task since defence remains pretty much a national competence within the EU. Von der Leyen affirmed as much in her letter: “Member States will always be responsible for their armed forces – from doctrine to deployment. This is the absolute foundation for every European nation.”

Within this context, Malta will also have to consider what role to play. Given its status as a neutral country, Malta has always been coy on defence matters. To this day, it is the only EU country to opt out of PESCO (Permanent Structured Cooperation), a structure intended to deepen defence cooperation between member states.

Nonetheless, Maltese military personnel have joined EU peace keeping and security missions, such as the Red Sea operation to defend merchant ships from Houthi attacks.

The question is how far will Malta go to deepen its participation in defence-related matters at EU level over the next five years.

Malta and defensive projects

Attard acknowledges that there are enormous limitations as to the areas where Malta can directly benefit from economies of scale when pursuing its national procurement of defence and security equipment and its harmonisation throughout the EU. However, he says the country can “ill afford not to be participative in principle or worse to be perceived as disinterested in these projects”.

“Our geo-political position at the southern periphery of frontline-Europe and as an island nation that is highly dependent on sea lines of communication renders us very vulnerable especially in times of war,” he says.

Attard has no doubt that Malta should be part of select defensive projects of Common European Interest. “I emphasise the word defensive projects,” he reiterates, citing as an example the strengthening of the multilayer air and missile defence systems of EU Member States through a European Air Shield.

He says this project has been identified among the most urgent military capability gaps together with cyber defence that needs to be addressed.

“Whilst the Council of the European Union, in its conclusions on security and defence adopted on 27 May 2024, looked forward to a proposal for a dedicated EU airspace strategy for security and defence with a view to its adoption in 2025, to date, Malta has not signalled its intention to participate in this initiative,” Attard notes with concern.

He points out that the conflict in the Middle East and the war in Ukraine have laid bare the impact the proliferation of ballistic missiles and drones is having on conflict.

“Closer to home, during the Libya crisis of 2011, the extreme possibility of having Lampedusa, Malta or Hurd Bank targeted by Libyan ballistic missiles was a matter that was given due consideration and accordingly appropriate mitigation measures were undertaken,” Attard notes.

The cyber threat

But it is not just the risk of conventional military aggression that should be considered, he adds. In an age of growing reliance on space technology for basic services such as the Global Positioning Systems, space satellites have become part of the European Critical Infrastructure as are cyber networks.

Cyberspace has no borders, he warns, citing recent cyber-attacks on energy providing networks, transport infrastructure and space assets as examples of risks posed to civilian and military infrastructure.

“There is a growing need within the EU to further enhance co-operation and investment in cyber defence in order to better protect, detect, deter, and defend against a growing number of cyber-attacks,” Attard says.

He believes Malta needs to actively boost its cyber defence capabilities both at a national level and within the EU framework by strengthening coordination and cooperation between the military and civilian cyber communities.

“This should ensure that we have efficient cyber crisis management capabilities at a national level and within the EU,” he says.

Without wanting to duplicate the work of NATO, the EU will seek more strategic autonomy, especially if Donald Trump is elected president in the US.

However, whether the new defence commissioner will get member states to act in unison on defence matters over the next five years is one of the biggest questions hanging over Von der Leyen’s second term.

What role Malta will play, pretty much depends on the doctrine government will adopt in an ever-changing global and regional scenario and the risks to security this will pose.