A New 'Culture of Security': How the ProtectEU Strategy Will Change the Internal Defense of the European Union

Translated by Federico Emanuele

In Brussels on April 1st, the European Commission presented its new internal security strategy, ProtectEU, which, alongside the Defence White Paper introduced in March, aims to strengthen defence cooperation among EU member states in a context of rising international tensions and unconventional threats to internal stability.

According to Magnus Brunner, European Commissioner for Home Affairs and the official leading the strategy’s development, security is “the challenge of our time.” To meet this challenge, the Commissioner has called for a new “culture of security,” one that adopts a whole-of-society approach, engaging public institutions, private actors, and citizens alike to make European society safer at every level. The new strategy was developed based on recommendations made by Special Adviser Sauli Niinistö in his Safer Together report, published in October 2024 at the request of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Niinistö’s report places particular emphasis on the need to prepare the Union to respond to various types of crises, including hybrid attacks orchestrated by external actors. This preparation requires greater cooperation between intelligence services and a more efficient system for information sharing among member states, to enhance deterrence and improve risk assessment capabilities.

As outlined in the ProtectEU strategy, the Internal Security Task Force, chaired by Magnus Brunner, will meet regularly to conduct risk analyses, ensuring up-to-date assessments of potential vulnerabilities and enabling coordinated and preventive actions across European countries. To support these analyses, the Commission will rely on the Single Intelligence Analysis Capacity (SIAC) - the intelligence unit of the European External Action Service - and will enhance its cooperation with the intelligence services of individual EU countries.

The primary focus areas of the new strategy include organized crime, terrorism, and hybrid threats. However, the strategy document places special emphasis on the latter, due to a surge in cyberattacks, sabotage, and disinformation campaigns, largely attributed to Russia. Since its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia has escalated hostile actions toward European countries, with significant impacts on internal security, stability, and democratic processes. A notable example was the Romanian presidential elections, annulled in December 2024 due to Russian interference. The report also links Russia to the instrumentalization of irregular migration flows, particularly at the Poland-Belarus border, and to cooperation with criminal networks operating within the EU.

To address such a wide range of threats - spanning internal and external security - the ProtectEU strategy proposes strengthening the mandates of European justice and security agencies. Europol, the EU’s police agency responsible for supporting cross-border investigations, will undergo a mandate revision to expand its scope, enabling it to participate in cases involving sabotage, information manipulation, and hybrid threats, and to better support national police operations. Other agencies, such as Eurojust and Frontex, will also see an increase in their competencies to improve the exchange of information among institutions.

Data access is another key component introduced by the strategy. A new plan - set to be presented in the first half of 2025 - will reform data access practices for investigative and judicial purposes. While the EU continues to uphold the legitimacy and protection of fundamental rights in data processing, especially on digital platforms, there is a growing need to facilitate access to such data to ensure effective investigations in an increasingly digital criminal landscape. The plan will promote systematic cooperation between digital service providers and law enforcement authorities, in line with the Electronic Evidence Regulation, which will come into force in 2026.

Further measures in the realm of cybersecurity will include greater involvement of ENISA, the EU Agency for Cybersecurity, which provides technical and operational support to EU countries in cases of cyberattacks and ransomware incidents. Strengthening cybersecurity and countering cyber threats have been major priorities on the Commission’s agenda: in early 2025, it implemented the Cyber Solidarity Act and released the Cyber Blueprint, both of which aim to improve member states' responses to cyberattacks. To address the growing need for skilled professionals in this field, ProtectEU includes a plan to train around 299,000 new cybersecurity experts through the Cyber Skills Academy, a digital platform dedicated to cybersecurity education.

The new culture of security proposed by the Commission clearly focuses on the next generation of digital threats, acknowledging that any new paradigm for internal defence must account for non-conventional destabilization attempts. By updating existing defence strategies and expanding the mandates of European security agencies, ProtectEU seeks to defend Europe’s territorial and technological sovereignty. Still, many challenges remain - from the need to respond rapidly to constantly evolving hybrid threats, to ensuring effective cooperation among member states in an area as sensitive to national interests as internal security. Hybrid threats pose risks to both external and internal security, blurring the lines between borders and traditional areas of competence. Cyberattacks, in particular, by nature transcend national boundaries and present a major challenge to joint defence efforts. Ultimately, the effectiveness of the Commission’s measures will depend on the level of cooperation established across all levels - from national authorities to European institutions - to guarantee security and protect common interests.

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