Keynote speech by Commissioner Kubilius in the EU Military Committee meeting at the level of Chiefs of Defence

Keynote speech by Commissioner Kubilius in the EU MC meeting at the level of Chiefs of Defence

We are living in a reality of 360 degrees of challenges to our security.

The Iran war brings real threats to our Southern and Mediterranean Flank countries, and challenges our 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.

We are facing a process of strategic transformation. From the Transatlantic collective defence of Europe into the European collective defence of Europe.

A major tectonic shift in European security architecture, which happens once in 100 years.

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.

It would be a mistake if the community of Chiefs of Defence would not be intellectually active in presenting its own ideas on what this new European collective defence architecture needs to look like.

Because the security of Europe is especially and absolutely dependent on collective defence and deterrence power.

This means that the Community of Chiefs of Defence needs to be very active 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 the European Defence Union.

And even about a European Security Council – for the collective political leadership of European defence architecture.

And the Chiefs of Defence need to be the first, to communicate to national political leadership the fact, that looking into the future, things in European defence will not stay as they were up till now.

Besides defence architecture, we also need your active involvement into development of European defence industry.

Until now we, as a European Union, have done a lot to assist Member States to develop their defence capabilities, to meet NATO capabilities.

And we created conditions for our defence industries to ramp up production.

To name just the most important initiatives: SAFE, National Escape Clause, forthcoming MFF, EDIP, EDPCI's, Ukraine Support Loan, etc.

Despite those developments, all of us, including the Community of Chiefs of Defence should be very much concerned about the state of the 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.

This production gap leaves Europe without one of the most important instruments of deterrence and creates a permanent temptation for Putin to test Europe.

With Russia so heavily outproducing us, that reminds me of the situation before the Second World War,

When Hitler transformed the economy of Germany into a “war economy” and started to produce big numbers of modern tanks, aircraft, battleships.

But Europe and the United Kingdom were slow and late in ramping up their own production,

Creating the temptation for Hitler to start the war.

At that time Winston Churchill was – alone and unsuccessfully – trying to change the British government's policy. To outproduce Nazi Germany.

A troubled Winston Churchill spoke these words in the House of Commons on November 12, 1936,

Describing the government position as :

"...decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent.”

I want to avoid such a future conclusion about us.

And not only about the European Commission, but also about national governments.

And also about the Chiefs of Defence.

That is also why I ask you as Community of Chiefs of Defence to be among the most active players in EU defence industrial policy development,

To answer a very clear strategic question: how to outproduce Russia?

Defence production depends on two major factors:

First, on supply, which means what and how much industries can produce.

And second, on demand: What national governments and Chiefs of Defence want to procure.

Nowadays, we talk quite a lot about how to transform our defence industry.

But not so much about how to transform the demand for defence products.

And in my view – that is a big mistake.

Because what kind of defence industry we shall have very much will depend on the Chiefs of Defence and your ability to transform the demand.

And that will bring an answer - can we outproduce Russia?

Last year I had informal discussions with prominent Ukrainian leaders of politics and industry, who created the “drone army” in 2023.

And now they are leading the whole defence of Ukraine. During our conversation, they made a clear comment:

“If we would have listened to the Ukrainian military commanders from the very beginning of the full scale invasion, we would not have been able to create the drone army”.

Here was no military demand for drones at the very beginning.

Only after some time, in Ukraine innovative defence supply managed to transform military demand. Now the demand for innovations from military and political defence leadership of Ukraine leads the transformations in supply.

And that is the formula of Ukraine's success in defence.

Before talking about our supply and demand, let's remember a few facts from publicly available European statistics:

• In the last 6 years – from 2020 up to 2025 – Germany procured for its defence in average 75% of their defence industrial output;
• Exports of German industry to EU Member States was only 13.5%,
• Around 70% of German procurement contracts were direct awards using the “security” exemption of TFEU Art. 346

For French industry numbers are quite similar:

• 64% of total production was procured by the French government;
• only 8.0% was procured by other EU governments;
• and 75-80% of French defence contracts were direct awards under Art.346 without European competition.

Those are publicly available numbers.

We can draw only one conclusion: there is no defence market in the European Union.

The national governments of Member States, are taking care and favouring their own defence industry and industrial champions: Governments are procuring what their primes are producing.

That is where we can make simple conclusions about military demand in Member States.

It looks like demand is still very much influenced by established primes. Who are producing traditional, heavy stuff, sometimes very technologically sophisticated, up to the level of “haute-couture”, very expensive, and impossible to ramp-up production.

Possibilities for innovative supply, for genuine competition on the supply side still are very limited.

And it's also absolutely clear that – for the time being – there are no possibilities for a genuine defence market, which would bring real competition;

No possibilities for a push from “haute couture” towards cheaper, easier to scale-up “good enough” production.

That is what we see in Ukraine's defence production, when they managed to scale up from 1 billion euro of “good enough” production in 2022 up to 50 billion euro last year.

That is almost the same total production what German defence industry or French industry were able to produce in 2025.

How to change such a situation in the EU, how to develop a genuine defence market in the EU, very much depends not on the EU institutions, but on national governments. And Chiefs of Defence.

If the demand of national governments remains open only to national primes, with all the existing obstacles for genuine competition, with all the national bureaucratic protections of 27 different requirements for defence equipment, of 27 different rules for intra-EU transfers, of 27 different rules for national certification and for national recognition of testing results, then we can forget about a competitive European defence market.

And forget about the possibility to outproduce Russia and deter Russia. With all the threatening consequences that may bring.

Transformation of demand will define the future of our defence industry.

And of our possibility to defend ourselves.

How the demand side in Europe will start to change depends not so much on the European Commissioner for Defence and Space.

Even not so much on NATO.

It depends first of all on the Chiefs of Defence and national Defence Ministers and Prime Ministers.

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And finally.

How we deter Russia depends not only on what and how much we will produce with our defence industry.

But also on the answer to the question: Are we able and are we ready to fight a battle tested Russian army?

Which is able to use millions of drones? And which is much stronger than it was back in 2022?

On our side nobody has such a battle tested experience. Only Ukraine's military forces have.

And recently Ukraine has shown: Not only can they defend against a Russian invasion, but they can prevail against NATO military forces during military excercises, or can assist the drone defence of Gulf countries.

US State Secretary Marco Rubio recently stated that Ukrainian military forces are the strongest and most powerful in Europe.

President of Finland Alexander Stubb recently also stated, that “there is no army in Europe or the United States, by the way, capable of conducting a modern war the way Ukraine is doing”.

It would be difficult to understand if we in the European Union would not take it as our vital interest to integrate the best European, or even global, military force of Ukraine into our European defence architecture.

That is why the Community of Chiefs of Defence should be the strongest promoter of the integration of Ukraine's and Europe's defence capabilities.

Because you are responsible not only for defence of your country, but also for the collective defence of the whole Union.

Urgency to do it is high.

While NATO membership for Ukraine is still not available, while EU Membership will take a longer period of time, the Chiefs of Defence should urge their Prime Ministers to push for Ukraine's membership of the European Defence Union.

That is why the creation of a European Defence Union cannot be postponed.

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We are one Community.

European Union Commission, European Union Military Committee, European Union Military Service, EEAS and European Defence Agency, national Prime Ministers or Presidents, national Defence Ministers, and finally, most important, Community of Chiefs of Defence and personally each Chief - we all are responsible for the future of defence in Europe. For peace in Europe.

We each have a responsibility – separate but inseparable.

Either we shall learn to fight as Europe, not just as combination of 27, or Putin will conclude that he can outgun us.

Let's not allow ourselves “to decide only to be undecided, to resolve to be irresolute”, as Churchill said.

Never again it should be repeated!