Germany sits at the heart of Europe, a crossroads for goods, people, and knowledge. For that, and many other reasons, Germany is central to Europes collective preparedness. When Germany is ready, Europe is stronger.
The past years have been a series of wake-up calls, and each one had a direct impact on you and your Bundesländer. Covid-19 brought daily life to a standstill, Russia brought war back to our continent, and extreme weather is no longer the exception, but the new normal.
You have experienced this with the deadly floods in the Ahrtal, in 2021, that killed so many people and destroyed entire villages. This year, we have seen a sharp rise in hybrid attacks, and drones have grounded air traffic in Germany, my home country Belgium, and across Europe.
The EU now faces a complex cocktail of threats:
from climate shocks and cyberattacks to pandemics and potential armed aggression. These crises can cross sectors and cross countries with a domino effect that can paralyse entire societies.
In the past, we have too often simply reacted, but reaction is not a strategy. We need to change our mindset and build a new culture of preparedness across Europe. Preparedness must be part of everything we do right from the start, not as an afterthought. It must cover the full spectrum of threats.
When I took office one year ago, President von der Leyen asked me to lead Europes work on preparedness. Today, I have come to Bremen to do two things: first I want to listen to you about where our support is needed most. And second, I want to tell you how the European Union can support you.
In March, we adopted our EU Preparedness Strategy based on the report by the former Finnish President Niinistö. The main idea is simple: we must move from individual silos to working more closely together. Less fragmentation. More cooperation.
We dont need new rules and more bureaucracy.
We need stronger coordination and joined-up action, bringing together all key sectors, all key actors — at EU level and in every country.
This must start before a crisis hits. Foresight and anticipation are our early-warning lights, without them we are driving blind. This saves lives, and it also saves money.
This Strategy gives us a clear plan, and in the coming years we will put it into action together to strengthen our collective readiness. Let me focus on a few key highlights.
We are changing how we build our policies and initiatives: its called preparedness by design. Now every time we develop a policy or make an investment, in any sector, we ask two questions: first, does this make Europe stronger and better prepared? And second, will it hold up under pressure?
We are embedding preparedness into everything we do: our funding, our programmes, and our legislation. We encourage national authorities to take full advantage of the opportunities that already exist across many policy areas.
The EU now encourages more investment in civil and health preparedness, security, defence, and dual-use capabilities. We also support our Member States with a strong multiannual budget, focused on preparedness.
Every euro invested should make Europe safer, and the EU supports countries and regions to strengthen resilience and raise our level of preparedness.
We need to make sure we always have what we need, when we need it. That is why we have put in place a Stockpiling Strategy, so essential goods are always available across Europe, and a Medical Countermeasures Strategy to deepen our cooperation on health preparedness.
During COVID, we learned hard lessons. We didnt have enough masks and vaccines. Now we do. In case of a CBRN attack, we need medicines in place and the distribution networks to get them to people.
We are also stepping up our work with the private sector because companies run our supply chains, manage our security of supply, and operate much of our critical infrastructure like the Ports of Bremen or Hambourg.
A key part of our new Preparedness Strategy focuses on the individual citizen because each of us must be ready for anything. Everyone has a role in our collective safety.
This is one of the clearest lessons from the war in Ukraine: citizens are the backbone of preparedness. Their knowledge, their skills, their willingness to act is the superglue that holds a country together in an emergency.
If the power goes out, like it did in Spain last April, people need to cope on their own for the first hours, so authorities can focus on the most vulnerable. The EU is developing guidelines, so households can be self-sufficient for at least 72 hours. And we want preparedness built into school curricula, so every child grows up knowing what to do.
And something close to my heart: youth preparedness programmes. We need to train a new generation of young heroes, young people who know how to act when the next crisis comes. We already have strong examples in Germany. Your civil protection “lighthouses” in the Länder combine local leadership, community involvement, and practical support in an emergency.
We also need to face a hard truth: the threat of armed aggression against the EU is real. That is why we are strengthening our civil-military cooperation, so we are ready for the worst-case scenario. When civilians and the military know their role in an emergency, Europe is safer.
The civilian sector must be able to support the military when needed. Hospitals, for instance, can care for injured soldiers. The military must also be ready to support civilians like they did during COVID, helping repatriate citizens or transporting patients between countries.
We are developing civil-military preparedness plans, so both sides can work like a finely tuned machine. Since 80% of what our armed forces rely on is civilian infrastructure — roads, bridges, railways, and ports — we need to make sure these routes can be used by the military.
This means boosting dual-use investments. A concrete example is the Commissions recent proposal for the Military Mobility Regulation. It will make it easier and faster to move military assets across Europe.
Last July, the Commission proposed to upgrade the Union Civil Protection Mechanism, our protective shield in times of emergency. This Regulation brings civil protection, cross-sector crisis anticipation and coordination, and health preparedness into one instrument. This will reduce fragmentation and help Europe anticipate, prepare, and respond more effectively.
This Civil Protection Mechanism has proven its value. Requests for assistance have gone up over 10 times since it started in the early 2000s. Let me be clear: nothing changes for Member States or the Länder. You remain primarily responsible for crisis management. We are here to complement your efforts, especially during simultaneous and long-lasting crises, fully in line with the EU Treaties.
With this new proposal, we want to: anticipate risks earlier, with stronger early-warning systems and strategic foresight; deploy EU assets and teams faster; support more proactive pre-positioning, more expert exchanges, and more training; and create an EU Crisis Coordination Hub to better anticipate threats, share information, and coordinate across sectors.
I count on your support, not only for a strong German position in the Council, but also to help convince the more reluctant Member States.
Let me turn to how the EU can support you right now. Germany continues to provide exceptionally generous assistance to Ukraine through the UCPM. With Russian attacks targeting Ukraines energy infrastructure, our focus this winter is to support Ukraines energy sector and to ensure Ukrainian patients can keep receiving treatment here in Germany.
Your hospitals have treated around Ukrainian 1,600 patients evacuated through our EU Civil Protection Mechanism. I want to personally thank you for every life you helped save. Germany can be proud of that. The EU will continue to support you on this.
We also see strong leadership from the Bundesländer.
This year, Hessen, and in previous years other Länder, pre-positioned firefighters in high-risk areas to support France. The Commission will expand and finance pre-positioning of firefighters and equipment.
In October last year, the “Magnitude full-scale exercise” in Baden Württemberg helped enhance cross-border coordination. And I recently attended the Borealis exercise in Finland, where Germany played a vital role, in training for possible CBRN attacks. The EU will continue to support these cross-border trainings.
Germany also leads the rescEU emergency hospital project, which strengthens our European health preparedness. You host critical capacities in the European Civil Protection Pool, from pumps and CBRN decontamination units to mobile labs and firefighting trucks, often through cooperation between Länder. We want to make the Pool even stronger, and we count on you.
North Rhine-Westphalia is already cooperating with the Netherlands. Why not also use Pool capacities to deepen cooperation with Poland, Austria, or other neighbours?
I am driven by one simple ambition: to make Europeans safer and better prepared. Here in Bremen, I feel that same strong ambition. You are known for your resilience, from rebuilding after the war to facing the storms and rising waters of the North.
You know what it means to prepare, and you know the importance of standing together, like the Town Musicians of Bremen. The EU stands right by your side. This is how we will keep our people safe, here in Bremen, and across the EU.
