Remarks by Commissioner Kubilius on Defence Readiness Omnibus

European Commission -Speech [Check Against Delivery] Remarks by Commissioner Kubilius on Defence Readiness Omnibus Brussels, 17 June 2025 We are living in special times. As Mark Rutte famously said: “We are not at war. But we are certainly not at peace, either”. For the first time in a generation the risk of large-scale conventional attack in Europe has re-entered the strategic calculus. And our own readiness for defence and deterrence is not sufficient; at the moment in terms of current capabilities we are lagging far behind what we need to have for NATO defence plans. We need to understand, that our way of thinking till now has only two categories: peace time or war time. That also how our regulations are built. It's a wrong approach. We must recognise a simple but vital truth: when full peace can no longer be taken for granted, we need defence readiness - to deter aggression and prevent war. Defence readiness time also demands different regulations from peace time. When intelligence services are warning, that aggression is possible, readiness to defend peace becomes a priority. We now urgently need to get into shape. Get our peace time European Union “body” ready for defence, fit for self defence, fit for defence readiness. This is why we all adopted the Joint White Paper on European Defence Readiness 2030. It commits to mobilising €800 billion in additional defence investment over the next four years. Money alone, however, is not enough, if traditional “red...