Forging European Strategic Unity: The Case for a European Security Council

1. Introduction: The Strategic Imperative

Europe is confronting a transformed security landscape that demands new institutional responses. The focal question this analysis addresses is: where and how should European states deliberate and decide on a collective security strategy? The answer proposed here is a European Security Council (ESC): a streamlined, politically authoritative forum that unites EU and non-EU European partners to forge common positions on security issues. This need arises because no existing forum matches the problem that must be addressed. Europe’s principal security actors do not map onto the membership of any single organisation: the states that must act together – EU members alongside the United Kingdom, Norway, Ukraine and, on some questions, Turkey – are divided across NATO, the EU and neither of the two. NATO binds them to Washington, the EU excludes several of them and the ad hoc coalitions that have filled the gap since 2025 demonstrate the need for a sustainable solution. The ESC is proposed to address this need.

The strategic context also makes its creation urgent. In early 2025, the Trump administration reversed the established US policy on Ukraine, reduced military assistance and signalled at the Munich Security Conference that European allies must assume primary responsibility for continental defence. By mid-2026, these dynamics have become entrenched: US representatives have reaffirmed Washington’s intent to delegate defence responsibilities, while the administration’s posture towards Greenland has reinforced European perceptions of a US pivot away from its traditional guarantor role.1

European responses have been rapid but fragmented. A proliferation of ad hoc formats emerged in 2025: the UK-convened Lancaster House summit of 17 European states plus Canada in March;2 a Weimar+ meeting of key EU states, the UK and EU institutions in February;3 and parallel virtual formats linking NATO European allies with EU representatives. These initiatives demonstrated European resolve but also the absence of a standing framework capable of sustaining coordination. Commissioner Kubilius has articulated the need to ‘Europeanise’ European defence by coordinating capacities, spending and industrial planning across the continent – precisely the kind of function an ESC could anchor.4

Internal divergences also compound the external pressure. Central and Eastern European states, acutely conscious of Russian aggression, have moved boldly: Poland has explored nuclear deterrence options,5 Germany’s Chancellor Merz declared a goal of security independence from the US6 and Berlin has opened nuclear-sharing discussions with France.7 Southern and Western European states remain more focused on Mediterranean instability and are cautious about dramatic defence shifts in their policies. These divergences risk reopening historic European fault lines at the moment of the greatest strategic exposure. The ESC’s primary purpose is to manage precisely these divergences – not by erasing them, but by providing a forum where trade-offs can be negotiated, threat assessments can be shared and common positions can be built.

The ESC is proposed to serve four concrete purposes.

• Bridging the institutional gap between NATO and the EU, while uniting EU members and key non-EU partners (the UK, Norway, Ukraine and possibly Turkey) in a single high-level forum
• Enabling Europe to develop a unified strategic stance and coordinate responses to security challenges independently when necessary
• Managing divergent threat perceptions across Europe’s east–west and north–south divides through structured dialogue and issue linkage
• Reinforcing the European pillar of NATO and enhancing the coherence of EU external action – without duplicating either.

The paper develops the case for an ESC as follows: it first diagnoses the institutional gap in Europe’s current security architecture and then surveys the historical proposals and precedents for the ESC. It proceeds to set out the design principles for an ESC and then proposes a phased roadmap for its creation. In its final three sections, it first addresses the management of divergent perceptions of threats and then seeks to address what could be anticipated as the principal objections to the creation of an ESC, before summarising the policy recommendations in the concluding section.

2. Europe’s Institutional Gap

Existing institutions are structurally unable to fill the role of an ESC. NATO remains Europe’s cornerstone for collective defence, but its capacity to foster European strategic unity is intrinsically limited by its transatlantic character. When US leadership wanes or diverges, as it did dramatically in 2025, NATO’s ability to sustain European cohesion is impaired. Its consensus-based decision-making and narrow mandate around Article 5 also render it ill-suited as a forum for proactive European strategising – particularly on issues where the US is disengaged or where a European-only response is needed. Nor do the existing NATO–EU arrangements close the gap. The Berlin Plus framework agreed in 2003, which allows the EU to draw on NATO planning and assets, was designed for EU-led crisis-management operations, not for European strategic coordination; and it has in any case been largely frozen for two decades by the dispute over the participation of Turkey and Cyprus, which obstructs structured NATO–EU exchange across most of the agenda. Berlin Plus governs the use of capabilities, but it offers no venue in which Europeans might agree what they collectively wish to do.

The EU has significantly expanded its security and defence ambitions through PESCO, the European Defence Fund, the European Peace Facility and the ReArm Europe initiative. These efforts reflect a genuine attempt to build a European pillar of security. However, the EU’s framework is constrained by the unanimity requirement, which frequently produces lowest-common-denominator outcomes or paralysis. This constraint is real, but it is not decisive on its own: unanimity could, in principle, be relaxed through qualified majority voting or constructive abstention, as successive reform debates have proposed. The more fundamental obstacle is one the EU cannot reform away: its own membership. Not all key European security actors are EU members. Post-Brexit Britain, a significant military spender in Europe and a nuclear and intelligence power, operates outside EU structures. Candidate member Ukraine is central to the future of European security and stability. Norway and Turkey, strategically critical to NATO’s northern and southern flanks, respectively, are also outside the EU framework. Any EU-only forum structurally excludes such actors. No feasible internal reform can bring the United Kingdom, Norway or Ukraine inside the EU’s decision-making on the timescale Europe’s security predicament demands. The case for the ESC therefore rests less on the Union’s decision rules than on the boundary of its membership: the difficulty is not only how Europeans decide, but who is in the room when they do.

Although broader formats exist, they are insufficient. The European Political Community (EPC), established in 2022, convenes over 40 European nations biannually, but its scope is too wide and its mandate too thin for concentrated strategic decision making. Ad hoc minilateral formats – E3 on Iran, the Joint Expeditionary Force and Nordic Defence Cooperation – deliver results within a narrow scope but cannot unite Europe’s principal security actors simultaneously. The EEAS/HRVP, already stretched between an assertive Commission on defence and the European Council, cannot be a substitute for a political coordination forum.

The result is a systematic gap: no standing European forum exists where all key security stakeholders – EU members and non-EU partners alike – can regularly consult on strategy. The ESC is proposed to fill this gap. It would function not as a rival to NATO or the EU, but as a bridge between them and as a European caucus capable of preparing readymade positions for both – much as COREPER does for EU ministerial councils, but at the level of strategic direction. An ESC would be a small, representative and politically authoritative forum, authoritative not in any legal sense, but because it seats those who can commit national resources and bind their governments, at the level of heads of state and government and senior ministers. As envisioned, it more closely resembles the G7 than the UN Security Council.

Why this model, rather than an alternative? Other routes have been tried or proposed, and each fails on a similar basis. Reforming the EU’s decision rules would leave the membership boundary intact, and would thus still exclude the very actors – the United Kingdom, Norway, Ukraine – whose weight the enterprise requires. Expanding NATO’s political role would re-embed European coordination in a transatlantic frame at the moment Europeans most need to act without waiting for Washington. Relying on the ad hoc coalitions of 2025 secures the right participants but not continuity: each is convened afresh, negotiates its own terms and does not result in a standing capacity. The ESC is an option that combines the right membership, independence from American assent and a durable format. It is a format rather than a new institution precisely so that it can be assembled now, from an existing coalition, without a treaty basis.

3. Past Proposals and Precedents

The concept of an ESC is not novel. It has recurred as a proposal at moments of European institutional stress, with high-level political endorsements that provide a foundation to build upon.

3.1 Political Proposals

In June 2016, the German and French foreign ministers Steinmeier and Ayrault jointly proposed an ESC to steer EU foreign and security policy, envisioning all EU27 countries meeting annually, with a smaller rotating group representing the EU externally and, in the long term, holding a unified EU seat at the UN Security Council.8

In 2019, President Macron explicitly extended the ESC proposal to include the United Kingdom post-Brexit, arguing that Britain’s military and intelligence capabilities made its inclusion essential.9 Chancellor Merkel endorsed the concept, including a rotating membership model, in public statements and in the 2018 Meseberg Declaration, which committed France and Germany to explore faster and more effective EU foreign policy decision-making.10 Foreign Minister Maas went further, arguing that without relaxing unanimity, an ESC could not solve Europe’s foreign policy problems.11 The European Parliament acknowledged the concept in a 2018 resolution, while noting that it needed further development.12

3.2 Think-Tank Blueprints

Analytical proposals have converged on several common features of the problem. The Konrad Adenauer Foundation’s 2018 analysis proposed a representative and efficient ESC with rotating, contribution-weighted membership; decision-making by consensus with constructive abstention to prevent vetoes; and close integration with the EU’s High Representative.13 The Martens Centre’s 2020 blueprint proposed a combination of permanent and rotating seats, the involvement of EU institutions and qualified majority voting among ESC members to outpace the full EU27 unanimity requirement.14 RUSI and EUISS commentaries have similarly argued for an “ad hoc” format that is “bureaucratically light but politically punchy”, with non-EU NATO members as natural participants in the process.15,16

These proposals allow for the drawing of four lessons: inclusivity requires bridging the EU/non-EU divide; efficiency requires a core group smaller than the EU27; complementarity with NATO and the EU must be explicit; and the ESC’s value derives from political authority, not bureaucratic infrastructure. The 2025 Lancaster House format – now the “Coalition of the Willing”, meeting regularly under Starmer and Macron’s leadership – represents the closest existing approximation of the spirit and approach needed in an ESC, and key participants could serve as the natural nucleus for the formalisation of the new body.

3.3 Why the Conditions Are Now Different

These proposals did not take root not because their arguments were poorly made. For most of the period since 2016 the American security guarantee still felt dependable, which made a standing European caucus look at best redundant and at worst provocative, an invitation to charges of duplicating or decoupling from NATO. Brexit was raw, and defence cooperation with the United Kingdom was politically awkward on both sides of the Channel. No acute, continent-wide emergency forced the question, and each proposal foundered on the suspicion that it would either antagonise Washington or entrench a directoire of the largest states.

Each of these conditions has now been transformed. American retrenchment is no longer a hypothesis but a demonstrated and durable posture, so European self-organisation now reads as burden-sharing rather than decoupling. The post-2025 reset in relations between the United Kingdom and its European partners has made British inclusion not merely acceptable but expected. Russia’s enduring war on Ukraine supplies a condition that earlier proposals lacked. Decisively, a functioning nucleus already exists: the Lancaster House “Coalition of the Willing” and other formats meet regularly at the leaders’ level, demonstrating in practice the format that a decade of blueprints could only advocate. The task now is not to invent the ESC but to consolidate what is already emerging.

4. Design Principles

Four design principles are essential for an effective ESC.

4.1 Flexibility and Agility

The ESC must be nimble. It needs to avoid extensive bureaucracy and rigid procedures, convening rapidly when crises demand and in structured sessions for a longer-term strategy. This requires a lean secretariat rather than a new institution, one focused on managing logistics and follow-up. Discussions would take place behind closed doors without negotiated communiqués. On decision-making, the ESC should adopt positions by consensus where possible, but it should also implement a “consensus minus one” principle: a member with serious reservations may abstain constructively, while allowing others to proceed. This would prevent paralysis while respecting vital national interests.

4.2 Strategic Inclusivity

Inclusivity is essential for legitimacy. The ESC must incorporate the UK, Ukraine (as the current fulcrum of European security), Norway (strategically vital in the Arctic and North Atlantic) and, where politically viable, Turkey. Smaller EU states are represented through an EU institutional seat held by the president of the European Council or the High Representative. A rotating element would ensure regional diversity: seats could cycle among Nordic/Baltic, Southern and Central-Eastern representatives on a defined schedule. This would guard against the perception of a “directoire” of major states – a persistent concern for smaller members – and ensure that Eastern and Southern threat perspectives are both present from the outset. Inclusivity does not require universality; those not in each session would be kept informed, and issue-specific invitations remain open.

4.3 Function-Based Participation

Rather than a fixed membership council addressing all topics, the ESC could operate on a variable geometry, with attendance adapting to the issue. A Baltic security crisis would include the Baltic states; Sahel instability would engage Italy, Spain and France; and Arctic questions would include Norway and potentially others. This would prevent rigid “member” versus “non-member” labels that could create diplomatic friction, and it also ensures that those with the greatest stake in an issue are present at the table. A code of conduct would prevent absentees from blocking others’ decisions on matters in which they have not engaged.

4.4 Complementarity with NATO and the EU

The ESC would be a political coordination forum, not a military command. It would set the strategic direction, but operations would remain with NATO, EU missions or national coalitions. To make this complementarity a matter of routine, the NATO Secretary-General and the EU High Representative would hold standing invitations or observer status; the ESC could convene before major NATO meetings to align European positions; and any ESC-endorsed position could be presented through members in NATO/EU councils for implementation. Thus, the ESC would function as a European caucus – preparing readymade positions that strengthen both NATO’s European pillar and EU external coherence. Its value would grow precisely when US engagement in NATO diminishes and recedes as a coordinating need when Washington re-engages, thus making it a self-calibrating complement to the transatlantic relationship. The relationship with the EEAS/HRVP requires careful management, however: the ESC should draw on the EEAS analytical capacity without creating a competing planning structure that further marginalises an institution already squeezed between the Commission and the European Council.

4.5 What the ESC Could Produce

What, concretely, could the ESC produce? In its essentials, it would allow for a single focus for what is currently already being produced in a variety of pop-up diplomatic formats but on a more consolidated basis and with a more structured approach to building the future of European security. Its outputs would be political rather than legal, and cumulative rather than one-off. Four of these could be central.

First is a standing joint European threat assessment – that is, a single, regularly updated appreciation of the risks facing the continent, agreed across the eastern and southern flanks, which forces divergent national perceptions into a common document. Second is an agreed strategic direction on live questions, providing short, authoritative common positions on key issues, such as support for Ukraine, the eastern-flank deterrence posture and relations with Russia or China, that members carry into NATO and EU councils and into their own national policies. Third is a coordinated European capability and defence industrial master plan with agreed priorities for air defence, munitions, strategic enablers and the defence-industrial base that do not duplicate the EU’s funding instruments or NATO’s planning process but supply both with a set of clearly defined collective goals coupled with the political direction (and an unambiguous division of labour) they currently lack. Fourth is a more robust and timely arrangement for crisis coordination – that is, a settled protocol for rapid political consultation during a major incident and agreed lines for diplomatic messaging in the United Nations, the G7 and other forums.

These outputs are distinct from what existing bodies generate. NATO produces communiqués that require American assent and are confined largely to the military and Article 5 domain. The ESC would produce European positions, arrived at without waiting for Washington and ranging across the industrial and diplomatic as well as the military. The EU’s Foreign Affairs Council and European Council produce legal acts binding on the 27 member statues under the discipline of unanimity; the ESC would produce political direction, agreed among a smaller group that includes the non-EU actors the Union cannot institutionally accommodate. The European Political Community produces atmospherics across forty-odd states. The ESC, meanwhile, would produce decisions among the handful that must act. Finally, the ad hoc coalitions produce one-off arrangements, while the ESC would produce a continuous, cumulative set of collective decisions tied to strategic objectives. The value added is not another set of meetings but a standing European strategic body that no existing forum currently offers.

5. From Concept to Reality: An Incremental Roadmap

The ESC should evolve incrementally and build legitimacy through demonstrated value rather than seeking to erect a new institution from the outset. Historical analogies are instructive. The G7 began as an informal gathering of finance ministers in 1975 and evolved into a leaders’ summit over years of practice; COREPER’s role deepened gradually as European integration extended. The ESC could follow a similar trajectory. What deepens over time is the regularity and authority of the practice, not the size of an organisation. The ESC acquires standing agenda items, habitual caucusing and a settled membership, but not a legal personality, a treaty base or a bureaucracy of its own. Whether it should eventually be placed on a treaty footing should be a deliberate political choice rather than the fulfilment of a plan.

5.1 Phase 1: Formalise the Existing Coalition (Year 1)

The Lancaster House coalition, which already meets regularly at the leaders’ level, is institutionalised as a standing European Security Dialogue through a joint political declaration. France, Germany, the UK, Poland and an EU representative form the core, with quarterly meetings of foreign and defence ministers and an annual leaders’ summit. The immediate agenda focuses on Ukraine coordination and European capability gaps (air defence, munitions stockpiles). The first deliverable is a joint European threat assessment, a process that forces divergent perceptions into a constructive encounter. This phase does not require a new treaty authority.

5.2 Phase 2: Formalise as the ESC (Years 2–3)

In this phase, the format is formally named the ESC through endorsement at a European Security Summit. A core membership of 7–10 is agreed upon, including permanent anchor members (France, Germany, the UK and Ukraine), rotating EU seats organised regionally (Nordic/Baltic, Southern and Central-Eastern), an EU institutional seat and Norway. Turkey participates on a function-based basis. A lean secretariat is established. Terms of reference are published. The ESC undertakes an early high-profile initiative, such as coordinating a European maritime presence in a strategic theatre or a joint critical infrastructure protection programme, to demonstrate its practical value.

5.3 Phase 3: Expansion and Integration (Years 4–5+)

As the ESC matures, membership expands to reflect political realities. ESC pre-meeting caucuses before NATO summits and synchronising with EU Foreign Affairs Councils are regularised. Should EU treaty revision become viable, the ESC could be embedded in EU law. A formal review in Year 5 assesses performance and adjusts accordingly. The parliamentary dimension is addressed through regular reporting to national parliaments and, on EU-related decisions, to the European Parliament, thus avoiding a democratic deficit.

6. Managing Divergent Threat Perceptions

A key contribution of an ESC is that it reflects the reality that European security divergences are structural, not incidental. Eastern members treat Russian aggression as existential; Southern members are especially occupied by Sahel instability, migration and terrorism; and Western members balance both with concerns about escalation. These differences are specifically relevant to the security domain, where threat perception directly drives capability investment and policy preferences. The ESC’s value is precisely its ability to manage these divergences at the level of political leadership, where trade-offs can be struck and commitments made.

Three mechanisms enable this. First, the ESC makes sharing threat assessment a standard practice. Eastern members can explain to Southern partners why the Russian military threat is existential, and Southern members can convey how North African instability constitutes a security challenge for the continent as a whole. Over time, this structured exchange builds what analysts term a “common understanding of differences” – not convergence on identical priorities, but mutual comprehension that enables compromise.

Second, the ESC makes connections between issues and trade-offs a routine feature of its business. An ESC communiqué on Eastern flank deterrence is paired with commitments to Mediterranean maritime missions, while support for Ukraine is linked to engagement in African peacekeeping. Solidarity is thus made explicit and reciprocal, preventing the resentment that arises when member states feel their concerns are consistently subordinated.

Third, where consensus is unattainable, the ESC permits a subgroup to advance while others abstain constructively. This prevents the lowest-common-denominator outcomes that characterise EU unanimity while ensuring that dissenters have participated in the deliberation and accept others’ right to proceed. The Nordic and Baltic states, which are highly invested in European security and acutely aware of the risks of being excluded from a major state forum, are a key test case. A credible rotation and transparent agenda that addresses Arctic and Baltic concerns from the outset will be essential to securing their investment in the ESC’s legitimacy.

7. Anticipating Objections

Objections to the creation of an ESC can be anticipated. The first is that a separate forum would weaken the European Union’s foreign and security voice by drawing strategic discussion outside its institutions. This concern is understandable, but the ESC would not decide in the Union’s stead; rather, it would produce positions that its EU members carry back into the Foreign Affairs Council and the European Council, where legal effect is given. It is a caucus, not a rival, closer to the way member states already align their positions before meetings of international bodies than to a competing institution. There is, admittedly, a coordination cost: EU members will wish to align before ESC sessions, and the EU institutional seat exists partly to ensure that Union interests are represented in the room. But that is a familiar burden of any minilateral format, and it is a modest price for including the non-EU partners without whom a European position is incomplete. Far from muffling the Union’s voice, a common line agreed with London, Oslo and Kyiv lends that voice more weight, not less.

A second objection is that proceeding outside the EU treaties raises problems of democratic legitimacy, and that a closed-door format risks becoming as opaque as the Union’s trilogues. Operating by political agreement rather than treaty is in fact a deliberate strength, because it allows the ESC to include non-members and to begin without the years of ratification a treaty would demand. Because it creates no new legal obligations and no new competences, it displaces no existing line of accountability. Those lines must nonetheless be honoured, which is why the roadmap builds in reporting to national parliaments on commitments with resource implications and to the European Parliament on matters touching Union competence. Confidentiality in deliberation is necessary if leaders are to speak frankly and strike trade-offs; but confidentiality of discussion is compatible with transparency of outcome. Unlike the legislative substance settled in trilogues, the ESC’s positions would be published and defended in the national and European parliaments to which its members answer.

A third objection concerns the knock-on effects for existing institutions: whether the ESC would duplicate NATO, hollow out the Foreign Affairs Council or further marginalise the External Action Service. The format is designed to avoid each of these outcomes. It would run no operations and command no forces, leaving execution to NATO, EU actions and national coalitions. It would take no legal decisions, leaving those to the EU. Its footprint is deliberately minimal, a lean secretariat, not a bureaucracy, precisely so that it adds a missing function without subtracting from the institutions around it. Its role recedes, moreover, when Washington re-engages: the ESC is a complement calibrated to need, not a permanent addition to the institutional map.

8. Policy Recommendations

The following recommendations are addressed to European leaders and institutions.

• Launch the ESC through a joint political initiative rather than a new treaty. France, Germany and the UK should announce a European Security Dialogue at an upcoming NATO or the margins of an EU summit, with an explicit commitment to formalise it as the ESC within 18 months. The founding communiqué should state that the ESC complements NATO and the EU and does not constitute a new institution.
• Include the UK from the outset as a founding participant, alongside Norway, Ukraine and an EU institutional representative. Engage with Turkey on an issue-based approach. Publish a rotation schedule for EU member seats to ensure that every member state knows when it will participate, thus addressing concerns from smaller states about exclusion from a major-state directoire.
• Define the ESC’s function explicitly: strategic consultation, common threat assessment, coordination of policy approaches and alignment on joint actions where feasible. State explicitly what the ESC is not: a military command, an Article 5 substitute or a supranational decision-maker. Specify that NATO’s Secretary-General and the EU High Representative are regularly briefed and that the ESC convenes before major NATO and EU meetings.
• Focus the initial agenda on Ukraine and European defence capability gaps. Achieve early success on consensual, high-salience issues before tackling more contentious matters, such as China policy or migration-security linkages.
• Commission a joint European Security Strategy as the ESC’s first substantive output – a collaborative process that builds a common strategic understanding across divergent national perspectives.
• Establish practical coordination tools: a secure ESC coordinator network linking national security advisers, an ESC crisis virtual protocol for rapid consultation during major security incidents and alignment mechanisms for diplomatic messaging in international forums.
• Communicate the ESC to the United States as a burden-sharing initiative – Europe organising to “shoulder its responsibilities” and become a stronger partner. Offer an annual expanded session for transatlantic coordination, with the US and Canada as guests, to demonstrate that the ESC strengthens, rather than supplants, the alliance.
• Ensure accountability by reporting ESC outcomes to the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council and, on decisions involving EU competence matters, to the European Parliament. National parliaments should be informed of commitments that have resource implications. A formal review in Year 5 should assess performance, address any gaps in representation and determine whether formalisation through a treaty is warranted.

9. Conclusion

Europe’s security architecture has a structural gap. Neither NATO nor the EU can independently provide the pan-European strategic coordination that the current situation demands. An ESC, established incrementally through political will rather than treaty, “bureaucratically light but politically punchy”, could bridge this gap. It is not a new institution but a new format – a connective mechanism between NATO, the EU and national policies that enables Europe to articulate a unified strategic voice when it matters most.

The conditions that previously made an ESC seem premature have been reversed. The ESC concept has high-level political endorsement from Paris, Berlin and London; it has a natural nucleus in the Lancaster House coalition; and the strategic context makes European self-organisation not merely desirable but necessary. The Kubilius agenda to “Europeanise” defence planning requires the kind of political coordination forum the ESC would provide. The ESC offers a way forward – not by bypassing the EU, but by building a coalition of the capable and willing that can pull European security decision-making in a more effective direction.

The stakes are clear. A fragmented Europe invites exploitation by adversaries and marginalisation in the international order. A Europe capable of speaking with one strategic voice on security – uniting EU and non-EU partners, managing its internal divergences and complementing rather than duplicating NATO and the EU – is a stronger partner for the United States and a more credible global actor. Establishing the ESC is a pragmatic and achievable step towards this goal.

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1 Euronews, “Munich Security Conference: Rubio calls on Europe to ‘save the West’ in alignment with the US”, 14 February 2026: https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/02/14/munich-security-conference-rubio-calls-on-europe-to-save-the-west-in-alignment-with-the-us

2 UK Government, “Chair’s Statement: Leaders’ Meeting on Ukraine, London, 2 March 2025”, 2 March 2025: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/chairs-statement-leaders-meeting-on-ukraine-london-2-march-2025

3 UK Government, “Weimar Statement by Germany, France, Poland, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, the European External Action Service and the European Commission”, 12 February 2025: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/weimar-statement-by-germany-france-poland-italy-spain-the-united-kingdom-the-european-external-action-service-and-the-european-commission

4 Andrius Kubilius, speech to the European Parliament on European defence, 10 January 2026: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/speech_26_69; and his policy paper, 27 January 2026: https://andriuskubilius.lt/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/AKubilius-on-europeanization-of-european-conventional-defence.pdf

5 Polish Radio, “Polish defence chief backs developing nuclear weapons research capacity”, 2025: https://www.polskieradio.pl/395/7784/Artykul/3648896,polish-defence-chief-backs-developing-nuclear-weapons-research-capacity

6 Politico Europe, “Friedrich Merz on Germany, the United States and NATO”, 23 February 2025: https://www.politico.eu/article/friedrich-merz-germany-election-united-states-donald-trump-nato/

7 Reuters, “Germany says talks with France on nuclear deterrence are at an early stage”, 16 February 2026: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/germany-says-talks-with-france-nuclear-deterrence-are-an-early-stage-2026-02-16/

8 Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Jean-Marc Ayrault, joint paper on European security and defence, 24 June 2016: https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/en/newsroom/news/160624-bm-am-fra-281672

9 Emmanuel Macron, “For European Renewal”, 4 March 2019: https://www.elysee.fr/emmanuel-macron/2019/03/04/for-european-renewal.en

10 Reuters/SWP-Berlin, 3 June 2018: https://www.reuters.com/article/business/highlights-of-merkel-interview-on-europe-idUSKCN1IZ0KN/; 4 January 2019, https://www.swp-berlin.org/10.18449/2019C02/

11 Atlantic Council: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/natosource/germany-s-foreign-minister-calls-for-a-real-european-security-and-defence-union/

12 European Parliament: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52018IP0513

13 Olaf Wientzek and Christian E. Rieck, “Brussels’ New Telephone Number? How a European Security Council Could Strengthen EU Foreign Policy”, Konrad Adenauer Foundation, August 2018: https://www.kas.de/documents/252038/253252/7_dokument_dok_pdf_53332_2.pdf

14 Niklas Nováky, “EU It Yourself: A Blueprint for a European Security Council”, Martens Centre, 2020: https://www.martenscentre.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/european-security-council-blueprint.pdf

15 Richard G. Whitman, “Time for a European Security Council?”, RUSI Commentary, 22 April 2025: https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/time-european-security-council

16 Luigi Scazzieri, “A European Security Council: Between strategic need and institutional realities”, EUISS Commentary, 11 February 2026: https://www.iss.europa.eu/publications/commentary/european-security-council-between-strategic-need-and-institutional