Europe needs a more holistic understanding of resilience and a change in its understanding of civil defense, write Peter Hefele and Michaela Knoshkova.
Peter Hefele is Policy Director at the Martens Center in Brussels, and co-author Michaela Knošková is a political student at Kings College London and an intern at the Martens Centre.
Europe’s strategic turning point in its response to the war in Ukraine has been, at least in public perception, dominated by military budgets, rearmament, and debates about more effective European procurement and deployment. army ability.
The change in European confrontation patterns with Russia has reopened memories of the Cold War era. However, for this discussion, a key element of Western European defense architecture at the time, civil engineering componentsusually referred to as civil or civil defense/security/protection (i.e. “Zivilschutz” in Germany or “Protezione Civile” in Italy).
During the Cold War, civil defense contributed to a comprehensive understanding of security and its underlying administrative, personal, and material fabrics. In other words, it was necessary to complement military defenses in the context of concrete and direct threats from a stable enemy, including systems such as shelters, supplies and sirens.
Nevertheless, since the 1990s, when the era of geopolitical “naive” began in Europe, this civic element has been largely dismantled, with the exception of Nordic countries such as Finland. Unlike Germany, the civic aspects of these countries were not affected, even though their security budgets were heavily cut.
In the context of the current Russian confrontation, it is imperative to renew the civil defense debate, and not just because it has been gradually dismantled over the last few decades.
The global evolution of hybrid warfare exploits unprecedented economic and informational interconnections to revolutionize existing threat theaters. Europe is slowly developing appropriate measures to deal with this new type of total warfare, with lamentable delays.
Conversely, official Chinese and Russian military doctrine has covered this multi-tiered approach to offensive and gray zone operations for over a decade. Threats often come from random attackers, making today’s digitized and highly mobile society more vulnerable than ever.
With these challenges in mind, Europe needs a more holistic understanding of resilience and a change in its understanding of civil defense.This new understanding should primarily cover the systematic building of structures and the resilience mentality internal When external This made this distinction almost completely irrelevant.
This comprehensive approach should not be confused with the “militarization” or “over-securitization” of European societies and economies, as some critics have argued. On the contrary, it is an overdue answer to the situation of the “age of non-peace” (Mark Leonard), where connectivity and interdependence unfortunately become a significant source of fragility and conflict.
Policy coherence needs to be improved at national and European levels to build resilience structures and mindsets. Coherence is a top priority for environment, development and energy policy and is essential to the emerging debate on civil defense.
To achieve a unified response in the event of an international and/or large-scale disaster, policies among the various Member States need to be coordinated and complemented.
Encouragingly, the EU has made substantial progress in coordinating the civil defense policies of its Member States in recent years.
In 2021, the European Parliament adopted a decision to improve the capacity of the EU Civil Protection Mechanisms by significantly increasing the budget for 2021-2027 to €1.26 billion.
The EU has also expanded its capabilities by introducing ‘rescEU’. This is a reserve of civil protection capacity at European level that allows the European Commission to complement existing capacity at national level.
However, cross-border coordination should not be left solely to a top-down approach.
There are many successful initiatives between neighboring European regions and even across borders. The EU should not forget the importance of international lessons learned and follow the principle of European subsidization by encouraging and promoting international cooperation among local authorities, businesses, communities and other stakeholders. .
Compared to the EU’s vertical coherence, there is relatively limited coherence of policies that constitute or influence European civil defense.
So far, discussions about resilience have been held in various expert ‘silos’, including global health risks, climate change impacts, and supply chain disruptions.
This will be further enhanced by EU policy instruments and funding dedicated to post-event crisis management. Other major actors such as the United States and China systematically and continuously review their strategic vulnerabilities. advance and take concrete measures.
Therefore, in order to promote a comprehensive understanding of civil defense, the EU needs to create a platform for strategic dialogue between multiple segments of political, administrative, industrial and civil society actors.
This dialogue could further contribute to bridging different threat perceptions and mindsets and help develop a shared understanding of the challenges required for a resilient Europe.
