On Wednesday, September 30, European defence and security officials met in Brussels for the Euronews Defence and Space Summit. Military mobility across national borders and rising defence production shared the agenda with warnings about Russian hybrid threats. NATO and EU officials, defence ministers, military commanders and representatives of European defence and aerospace industries attended the one-day event at Albert Hall.
Belgian Defence Minister Theo Francken told Euronews journalist Angela Skujins that Europe faces a “dark winter” of further Russian hybrid attacks in the coming months. He called Russia the biggest threat to Belgium’s security. Several drone incidents have affected Belgium this year, and some disrupted air traffic.
“Russia, air attack, air attack, air attack. This is the biggest threat. So we need air defence, air defence, air defence,” Francken said. Europe needs Ukrainian technology to counter Russian jet-powered drones, he argued, along with “more stocks, more production, scale up production, and a large industrial base. Everything has to go faster.”
Military production and national borders
The summit agenda covered defence investment, joint procurement, military mobility, production capacity, cyber security, protection of civilian and military infrastructure, secure cloud infrastructure and emerging technologies. The EU is pursuing a broader defence-readiness agenda to raise production capacity and improve cooperation between member states.
European Commissioner for Defence and Space Andrius Kubilius has called for significant improvement in military mobility, pointing to the difficulty of moving troops and equipment quickly across national borders. Governments also want to strengthen Europe’s defence industrial base, tackle supply-chain vulnerabilities and differences between national procurement systems, and expand European manufacturing capacity.
Francken said Russia has 50 years of expertise in hybrid attacks, and Belgium must keep pace with technological change. “I don't want to have 200,000 drones somewhere in a stock, and in two months you cannot even use them because they're outdated. So we have to adapt,” he said.
He said Belgium had been “like the worst pupil of the NATO class” and had spent 1 per cent of GDP on defence; spending has now doubled. “But I cannot do in 18 months what has been neglected for 40 years.” Belgium has the EU’s highest debt and one of its most challenging budgetary positions, he said, making an allocation of 5% of GDP to defence unrealistic in the near term.
Disputes over who supplies weapons
The European Commission and EU states have proposed giving domestic arms manufacturers preference to reduce reliance on US-made weapons. The plan has divided member states, as some governments warn against over-protectionism given the manufacturing power of the US arms industry.
At the summit, US Ambassador to the EU Andrew Puzder criticised the proposal. “Only our enemies benefit when we lose focus on making sure we have the most effective weapons, supporting our mutual defence,” he said. “Capability and availability should determine the solution, not geography,” he argued.
Puzder praised the Commission for allowing American defence material to be procured for Ukraine under the bloc’s recent €90 billion loan to Kyiv. The US will seek the same provisions in upcoming defence policies, he said. He added that the EU executive had indicated it had “no intention” of preventing member states from using national funds to buy US weapon systems.
Ukraine, security and funding
Concern about NATO’s eastern flank framed the summit. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has stressed the need to maintain capabilities to respond to security threats, while European officials have called for stronger EU-NATO coordination. Participants also discussed protecting critical networks from state-sponsored cyber attacks and other hybrid activity.
In Kyiv, Kyrylo Budanov, head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, told Euronews’ Sasha Vakulina that countries with drone cooperation agreements could gain access to Ukraine’s newest technology for intercepting Russian jet-powered drones. “This isn’t about any specific product. It’s, in principle, about cooperation between countries on similar products,” he said.
Ukraine urged the EU on Tuesday to use immobilised Russian assets to help cover a potential financial and military shortfall in 2027 of up to $78 billion (€68.77 billion), should allies fail to increase contributions. Sergii Marchenko, Ukraine’s finance minister, made the request in Brussels to allied donors and financial institutions. The EU holds €210 billion in Russian sovereign assets, most of it in Euroclear, a Brussels depository. Marchenko acknowledged the issue was politically difficult and urged the bloc to consider a centralised, legally sound framework.