EPC Conference: Comprehensive security best practices: How can the EU and NATO work better together?

Brussels – 14 January 2025

This hybrid Conference will share best practice examples by bringing the perspectives of Estonian, Finnish and Swedish agencies, representatives of the EU, NATO and Ukraine.

The development of a more robust European and transatlantic defence posture goes hand in hand with a culture of comprehensive security and preparedness. This requires a multidisciplinary approach to security that cuts across silos and incorporates everyone from society to business to national stakeholders and international institutions.

This event is organised jointly by three entities, including the EPC, Elisabeth Rehn – Bank of Ideas, and Hanaholmen – Swedish-Finnish Cultural Centre.

The impact of the event is supported by a policy paper produced by an independent Finnish-based security policy think tank Elisabeth Rehn – Bank of Ideas. The report “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 report 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 EU’s 42.7 assistance clause has not been sufficiently taken into account.

Cooperation between the 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 – require a more holistic approach to security. Here, the whole-of-governance and whole-of-society security concepts of the Nordic and 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, which involve companies, non-governmental organizations, 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 advantage of agile and straightforward crisis management and society-wide cybersecurity expertise, which would add significant value to enhanced EU-NATO cooperation.

You can find the programme and speakers for this event here.