A Policy Paper regarding Perspectives on Nordic-Baltic comprehensive security concepts for the development of EU-NATO preparedness cooperation
Elisabeth Rehn – Bank of Ideas, the European Policy Centre (EPC), and Hanaholmen, the Finnish-Swedish Cultural Centre are jointly organizing a hybrid conference in Brussels, Belgium on 14 January 2025 entitled Comprehensive Security Best Practices: How Can the EU and NATO Work Better Together?
The impact of the event is supported by a policy paper produced by Elisabeth Rehn – Bank of Ideas. The policy paper Be prepared: Shaping EU-NATO Cooperation through the Perspectives of Estonia, Finland, and Sweden (Tölli, Eklund & Kotamäki, 2025) touches on EU-NATO in the context of preparedness cooperation and offers perspectives on its development from the comprehensive security cooperation of Estonia, Finland, and Sweden.
The key result of the policy paper is that the EU and NATO must prepare better than they currently do, not only for cross-border crises, but also for a full-scale war in order to combat the ever more unpredictable Russian threat. In EU-NATO cooperation, preparation for situations following the activation of NATO’s Article 5 and the EU’s Assistance Clause 42.7 has not been sufficiently taken into account.
Cooperation between the international organizations focuses on armed defence, but preparing for increasingly multidimensional crises in the future, such as natural disasters following climate change and hybrid influence – of which the sabotage of submarine cables and pipes is a current example – requires a more holistic approach to security. Here, the whole-of-government and whole-of-society security concepts of the Nordic and the Baltic countries can offer concrete perspectives and practices for building the EU-NATO comprehensive security union.
Finland’s expertise lies in its advanced comprehensive security concept and its wide-ranging civil preparedness and security of supply planning, involving companies, NGOs, and citizens to ensure the crisis preparedness of society. In turn, Sweden’s key assets are its reformist and consensus-oriented security mindset and its state-invested, export-driven security and defence industry. Estonia has the advantange of agile and straightforward crisis management and society-wide cybersecurity expertise, which would add significant value to enhanced EU-NATO cooperation.
Publisher:
Elisabeth Rehn – Bank of Ideas, 2025
ISBN 978-952-69019-4-7 (softcover)
ISBN 978-952-69019-5-4 (PDF)