High Representative Kaja Kallas put three items on the agenda when EU defence ministers met in Brussels on Monday: support for Ukraine, an emergency security protocol to coordinate the response to hybrid attacks, and a stronger Aspides naval mission in the Red Sea. The meeting made no significant advance on any of them.
The Emergency Security Protocol is Kallas's and Ursula von der Leyen's answer to sabotage, cyber and drone incidents that stop short of armed aggression. Von der Leyen announced it in mid-September as part of a new security structure. When a hybrid threat emerges, member states would convene to coordinate a response, in a loose echo of NATO's Article 4 consultations.
Defence Commissioner Andrius Kubilius framed the logic. "If we are facing hybrid warfare, we need to have hybrid defence," he said, adding that ministers would look at how to define which means the EU must be ready to use. Kallas stressed the protocol must complement NATO rather than duplicate it, and warned that intelligence shows Russia is planning more sabotage.
The backdrop was not abstract. Russian aircraft breached Finnish airspace over the Gulf of Finland on Friday, and Danish intelligence has reported a growing risk of Russian military action against NATO. Finland's defence minister, Antti Häkkänen, called for "bigger measures", stronger coordination, money and joint procurement for air defence. Ministers showed interest in the protocol. Interest is not agreement.
On the Red Sea, Kallas wants ships already pledged for the Strait of Hormuz redirected to Aspides. "The need is bigger than it has ever been," she said, as Houthi forces advance in Yemen. Only two member states have offered vessels. Separate pledges in the region are no substitute: Macron has pledged troops to protect a Saudi oil plant and the UK has offered air-to-air refuelling, but appetite across the EU for Aspides itself is thin.
Writing in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Nikolas Busse argued that commercial shipping in the Red Sea needs more protection and that Europeans will have to provide it themselves rather than wait for Washington.
The EU is not short of announcements. It is short of hulls and of a shared threshold for when a hybrid attack demands a collective answer. A protocol that only convenes capitals costs little but decides nothing, and an Aspides that lacks ships cannot escort them. With winter energy supply already strained by the Gulf crisis, the next test is whether the pledges Kallas is asking for arrive before shipping risks bite.
