Time for a European Security Council?

The Trump Administration’s decision to reverse the US position, away from providing diplomatic and military support for Kyiv and towards brokering a peace deal in Russia’s war on Ukraine, has upended the transatlantic alliance.

Europe’s response has seen a rush of activity. Most European states have doubled down on public and diplomatic support for Ukraine and are scrambling to put in place arrangements that might substitute for the withdrawal of US military supplies and intelligence support. A flurry of initiatives is underway to signal that Europeans are now serious about addressing the shortfall in spending on their own security and defence.

There is no pre-existing format that allows Europe’s major security and defence players to meet collectively, separately from the US. One key characteristic of recent weeks has been a succession of ad hoc and pop-up meetings bringing together different groupings of European states. On 2 March, the UK-hosted Lancaster House summit of 17 European states and Canada, ‘Securing Our Future’, was a prominent example of these gatherings. Other examples include the ‘Weimar+’ gathering (Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Spain, the UK, European External Action Service, European Commission) on 12 February and the (virtual) gathering on 7 March of the leaders of Canada, Iceland, Norway, Turkey and the UK with the EU’s Presidents of the European Commission, European Council and High Representative for Foreign Affairs.

Of Two Minds On Ukraine

This drive for collaboration and networking between European states has accelerated following the televised Trump-Vance verbal assault on 28 February in the White House on President Zelenskyy and hostility towards Ukraine from its former ally. In response, much of Europe’s political and security elite felt compelled to produce an avalanche of social media comment with contrasting pledges of support for Ukraine as the victim of war pursued by a Russian aggressor.

A fundamental schism now exists between the US and (most) European states on the war on Ukraine. This has exacerbated the existing uncertainty about the Trump Administration’s commitment to European security, stimulating a flurry of taboo-breaking statements by some European leaders and galvanising states to pursue measures to bolster national and collective security.

The most remarkable of these repositionings has been Germany, where the incoming Chancellor Friedrich Merz, not yet formally confirmed in office and viewed as a staunch Atlanticist, has declared his objective to ‘achieve independence from the USA’; his intention to enter into a dialogue with the UK and France to discuss ‘[t]he sharing of nuclear weapons’; and his proposal to end Germany’s debt brake for defence expenditure in order to facilitate spending of up to €1 trillion on defence and infrastructure across the next decade.

Europe is committed to rearming at a rate unprecedented since the early stages of the Cold War. European states east of Brussels have made significant defence expenditure commitments, and almost no topic of European security seems to be off-limits, with Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk suggesting to the country’s parliament that the country needed to ‘reach for the most modern possibilities, also related to nuclear weapons and modern unconventional weapons’.

Backfilling for the US’s withdrawn support for Ukraine has to be a priority, but it is one that is going to require new levels of ingenuity and risk-taking by European states.

Politically coordinating these commitments is becoming an increasingly pressing concern. NATO might have provided the most appropriate forum for such discussions in the past, but it is a defensive crouch. Much of the debate within NATO is on what reactive measures, especially on defence spending, need to be undertaken by Europeans to mitigate the apparent antipathy towards the Alliance held by key members of the Trump Administration. And, crucially, to dampen down any moves towards a ‘cash for deterrence’ interpretation of Article 5 in Washington.

In contrast to NATO, debates within the EU appear purposeful and expansive, with the President of the European Commission already rolling out plans to ‘ReArm Europe’. The EU is unlocking game-changing financial resources for defence spending by member states, through repurposing existing financial resources, reinterpreting limits on member state government debt, and through borrowing to provide for greater European strategic autonomy, rooted in an expanded European defence-industrial base.

A Second Pillar

As we enter this interregnum in European security, a key question is whether the actions of European states and regional organisations might need a degree of coordination to ensure the most effective outcomes, and how that can be achieved. To paraphrase former Secretary of State Madeline Albright: in seeking to address the anxiety about the US decoupling from European security, how can Europeans address the need to avoid duplication in their endeavours? How can unhelpful discrimination between those who do not have membership of all Europe’s security organisations and caucuses be avoided? In short, how can Europeans coordinate so that all those with a significant stake have a meaningful say?

When a European security council has been proposed in the past, it has been because Europe’s ‘great powers’ required a forum to settle the continent’s security matters, or, more recently, because the EU needed such a body to be a more effective international actor. Emmanuel Macron revisited the idea during a campaign speech in 2017 when he was looking at ways in which the UK might be engaged in European security discussions post-Brexit.

Macron’s grande idée stimulated a response in Berlin and blueprints for a new EU body but there is now a stronger case for a different arrangement that allows for a more structured discussion on European security and defence arrangements. This would provide a more balanced and joined-up approach than the outbreak of contact groups and gatherings. At a minimum, it might channel discussion to reduce the plethora of formats where different constellations of European states have met for consultations in recent weeks. Its rationale would be as a locus for discussions on areas of shared interest, where Europeans see it as beneficial to consult to coordinate positions. European support for Ukraine, and a collective response to the pursuit of a just and lasting peace from Russia’s war fighting, would provide an obvious founding focus.

In its modalities, a European security council could be something more akin to a European G7 for security than a Europeans-only Atlantic Council: a body which is bureaucratically light but politically punchy. It could also help remedy the failure of the EU to provide a format for consultation where the non-EU European members of NATO collectively engage with the EU-27 on the latter’s collective security and defence undertakings.

Determining the cast of attendees at a new council will require some soothing of diplomatic egos (the language of ‘members’ might usefully be avoided). The EU27 could usefully debate among themselves which member states are content to be represented by leaders of EU institutions and also which member state (and candidate state) representatives are appropriate. The non-EU members of NATO representation might be confined to Norway, Turkey and the UK. Ukraine’s position as the current fulcrum for European security requires its participation.

One argument against such an arrangement is that it would duplicate activities that would better be undertaken elsewhere. For states like the UK the argument has been that NATO is the appropriate forum for such discussions. This argument held water when the supremacy of US leadership was a given, and when the EU’s impact on military capability development in Europe was marginal. Both of these elements are now questionable. The UK has long resisted the proposition of a European pillar of NATO. But the idea that the EU forms the basis for this pillar has significant currency inside the Brussels beltway. It carries with it the implication that should the US pillar of the Atlantic Alliance drop away or atrophy there will be an arrangement in place that can take up the load of European security.

The Lancaster House summit demonstrated that the UK has an appetite for a formal arrangement through which Europe’s future security needs might be collectively addressed. A British government advocating the need for a new standing forum for European defence and security (especially with its history of reticence on proposals for European caucusing on defence), would further bolster the impression that the Starmer-led government has resolved to provide leadership on the future of Europe’s security.

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© Richard Whitman, 2025, published by RUSI with permission of the author.

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