European Commission vultures are exploiting the “natural” disaster flooding in Valencia, Spain, to push for the War Preparedness scheme advocated in the report, “Safer Together—Strengthening Europe’s Civilian and Military Preparedness and Readiness,” authored by former Finnish President Sauli Niinistö. Niinistö, acting In his capacity as Special Adviser to the President of the European Commission, presented the report on Oct. 30. The Executive Summary is included on page 13 of the report.
The report is described by the pro-EU outlet Euractiv as “Finland’s Ex-President Niinistö’s Plan To Prepare Europeans for War.” Euractiv commented on the Valencia flood saying that “The stark contrast between the reality on the ground and the recommendations made in former Finnish President Sauli Niinistö's report highlighted the shortcomings of Europe’s preparedness for such events.”
Niinistö's report starts with claiming that the Covid pandemics, extreme climate events and the Ukraine war are not isolated events, but “are driven and connected by underlying fault lines, long-term shifts and root causes that point to a prolonged period of high risk and deep uncertainty for the Union. We need to awaken to a new, unstable reality and there is no reason to expect that the underlying driving forces will dissipate in the foreseeable future.”
Therefore, “The EU needs to adopt a robust all-hazards, whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach to its civilian and military preparedness and readiness.”
The militarization of society is called “empowering citizens to be able to take more responsibility for their individual preparedness.” This must be done under “a stronger role of the EU as a political, economic and security actor.” “Member States should strengthen their cooperation on European defense, jointly investing more to close longstanding gaps in our military and defense industrial readiness. This is also necessary to be able to support Ukraine in the long-term in a way that creates the conditions for a lasting peace on Ukraine’s terms.” The report authors know that such a goal will never be reached, but they use it as a pretext to call for streamlining existing structures, including “full access to the necessary data and information that enable effective decision-making” and “ensure that civilian and military crisis response actors enable each other and can operate seamlessly, including to prepare for the most severe military contingencies.”
To reach all this, a war economy is needed. “The drastic deterioration of Europe’s security situation will need to be reflected in the allocation of budgetary resources, against the backdrop of decades of relative underinvestment in areas such as defense.” The new preparedness framework must be considered when “designing new legislation, reviewing regulatory frameworks or setting up new funding instruments.”
