Kallas forms high-level defence group with UK and Ukraine voices

Kaja Kallas, the European Union's chief diplomat, has convened a high-level group of former political and military leaders to examine how the bloc can defend itself in an era of shifting American priorities. The announcement, made Tuesday at an informal gathering of EU defence ministers in Ireland, signals a recognition in Brussels that existing institutional channels may be too constrained to produce the strategic rethink the moment demands.

An independent voice for uncomfortable truths

Kallas was explicit about why she has turned to outsiders. "Why have these political and military leaders? They can also say things that we, as institutions, cannot," she told ministers. The remark cuts to a persistent problem in EU defence policy: the need for consensus among 27 member states often forces compromises that water down ambition, while officials in the European External Action Service and the European Defence Agency must operate within narrow mandates. A group of former prime ministers, defence ministers and chiefs of defence, people with nothing to lose and deep institutional memory, can articulate gaps and contradictions that serving officials cannot.

The composition remains undisclosed. A spokesperson for Kallas declined to name participants, saying only that the group will include "prominent figures from the European Union as well as the United Kingdom and Ukraine." The inclusion of British and Ukrainian voices is deliberate. Since Brexit, the UK has been excluded from formal EU defence structures such as the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) and the European Defence Fund, despite possessing the continent's most capable military alongside France. Ukraine, meanwhile, has accumulated more high-intensity combat experience than any European army since 1945.

Not replicating America, but learning from Kyiv

Kallas framed the group's mandate carefully. "The aim of the group was not to work on replicating U.S. defense capabilities but to focus on defending European territory by using 'unique strengths' while also using the 'extensive operational experience of Ukraine' to 'challenge conventional thinking.'" The distinction matters. For two decades, European capability shortfalls have been measured against American benchmarks, strategic airlift, satellite intelligence, carrier groups, suppression of enemy air defences. Matching those would cost hundreds of billions and decades. The alternative is to ask what Europe actually needs to deter or defeat a threat on its own soil, and what Ukraine's war has revealed about the changing character of conflict: massed drones, electronic warfare, artillery attrition, and the integration of commercial technology into military systems.

That Ukraine is being treated as a source of doctrinal insight rather than merely a recipient of aid marks a shift. Since February 2022, the EU has committed over €43 billion in military, financial and humanitarian support to Kyiv, according to European Commission figures. But the flow of lessons has been largely one-way. Ukrainian officers have studied NATO doctrine; now NATO and EU armies are studying Ukrainian improvisation, from the use of first-person-view drones to the decentralised targeting cycles that allow a gunner to engage a target minutes after a drone spots it.

The American context: pressure and pivot

Kallas acknowledged the elephant in the room. "Of course NATO remains the cornerstone of our European security. At the same time, the United States is also calling on European allies to assume greater responsibility for our own defense." The language is diplomatic but the reality is sharper. Across two administrations, Trump's first term and Biden's, Washington has pressed European allies to meet the 2% of GDP defence spending guideline, to fill critical enabler gaps, and to prepare for a scenario where the US is simultaneously engaged in the Indo-Pacific. The 2024 NATO summit in Washington produced a new defence industrial pledge and a commitment to strengthen the European pillar within the alliance. But the gap between pledges and procurement remains wide.

European defence spending has risen. According to NATO's 2024 annual report, European allies and Canada collectively spent an estimated 2.0% of GDP on defence in 2024, up from 1.47% in 2014. Yet much of the increase has gone to personnel costs and off-the-shelf purchases from US manufacturers, F-35 fighters, Patriot batteries, CH-47 Chinooks, rather than to collaborative European programmes that would reduce strategic dependency. The European Defence Fund, running from 2021 to 2027, has a budget of just under €8 billion, a fraction of what a single major weapons system costs.

Ireland as host: symbolism over substance

The choice of Ireland for the informal defence ministers meeting carries its own message. Ireland is not a NATO member, maintains a policy of military neutrality, and spends roughly 0.2% of GDP on defence, the lowest in the EU. Its participation in EU defence initiatives is limited to those that do not prejudice its neutrality, such as civilian crisis management and some PESCO projects. Hosting the meeting allows Dublin to signal engagement without altering its posture. For Kallas, it offers a neutral venue, literally and politically, to launch a group that will inevitably touch on questions of collective defence, nuclear deterrence and the EU's Article 42.7 mutual assistance clause, all of which sit uncomfortably with Irish neutrality.

What the group cannot do

The high-level group has no decision-making power. It cannot allocate funds, launch procurement programmes, or commit member states. Its output will be a report, likely non-binding recommendations, delivered to Kallas and, through her, to the Council. The risk is that it becomes another exercise in strategic reflection of the kind Brussels excels at: the 2016 EU Global Strategy, the 2022 Strategic Compass, the 2024 Defence Industrial Strategy. Each diagnosed the same problems, fragmentation, duplication, insufficient investment, lack of interoperability, and each produced incremental progress at best.

The difference this time may be the personnel. If Kallas has recruited leaders who recently left office, former prime ministers who chaired national security councils, former chiefs of defence who managed force generation, they bring not just expertise but political capital. They can call their successors. They know which capitals block which programmes and why. They understand the domestic politics that drive defence industrial policy: the French insistence on strategic autonomy, the German preference for NATO frameworks, the Eastern European demand for US security guarantees, the Southern European focus on maritime borders.

The UK question: partner or rival?

The UK's inclusion is the most politically sensitive element. Since the 2020 Trade and Cooperation Agreement, EU-UK security cooperation has been conducted through ad hoc channels, a joint declaration on foreign policy, a security-of-information agreement, participation in some PESCO projects as a third country. The Labour government elected in 2024 has sought a "reset" with Brussels, including a veterinary agreement, mutual recognition of professional qualifications, and deeper defence ties. But the EU has resisted a formal defence pact that would give London a seat at the table without the obligations of membership. By inviting British figures into an advisory group, Kallas sidesteps the institutional deadlock while accessing British expertise, on nuclear deterrence, carrier strike, intelligence, and the integration of US and European systems.

Whether this presages a broader UK-EU defence treaty remains unclear. The UK's 2025 Strategic Defence Review, due to report later this year, is expected to emphasise the Indo-Pacific tilt and the primacy of the US alliance. European officials privately doubt London will accept constraints on its sovereignty for the sake of EU frameworks. But the war in Ukraine has forced a pragmatism that was absent in the Brexit years. British artillery barrels, Storm Shadow missiles, and intelligence sharing have been vital to Kyiv. The same logic, shared threat, shared interest, applies to European defence more broadly.

Ukraine's seat at the table

Ukraine's participation is unprecedented. No non-EU, non-NATO country has been invited into an EU high-level defence advisory body. It reflects a reality that Brussels has been slow to formalise: Ukraine is now the most battle-hardened military in Europe. Its officer corps has managed combined-arms operations, air defence networks, deep-strike campaigns, and a defence industrial mobilisation under fire. The lessons are not all transferable, Ukraine fights an existential war of survival with total societal mobilisation; EU armies are professional, volunteer forces in peacetime. But the technical and tactical insights, how to counter glide bombs, how to sustain artillery rates, how to integrate commercial satellite imagery into targeting, are directly relevant.

There is also a political signal. Ukraine is an EU candidate country, granted candidate status in June 2022 and opening accession negotiations in June 2024. Defence integration is not formally part of the acquis communautaire, but the Strategic Compass and the European Defence Industrial Strategy both envisage deeper ties with partners. Bringing Ukrainian voices into the group now, before accession, establishes a precedent: that Ukraine's security architecture will be woven into Europe's, not bolted on afterwards.