BRUSSELS — EU capitals are quietly preparing for how the bloc should respond to a major hybrid attack that leaves several citizens dead — an outcome that looks increasingly likely, according to five EU diplomats and officials. But the efforts to prepare are exposing splits on how much of a role the EU should play on security matters, and whether the bloc's efforts are redundant with NATO. The talks about a nightmare attack scenario have taken place in recent weeks among EU ambassadors from all 27 countries gathering in "restricted format," meaning without phones or assistants.
Discussions have ramped up since the discovery of an explosives-laden drone at Leipzig airport in August, said the diplomats and officials, who were granted anonymity to discuss the confidential exchanges. While the EU has discussed such scenarios for years — unveiling a "hybrid toolbox" geared at coordinating responses to cyberattacks, election interference, and sabotage — the latest talks zeroed in on the risk of more serious attacks that cause large-scale casualties. Two diplomats said a meeting among EU ambassadors last Wednesday focused specifically on such examples.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the EU says Moscow has intensified a campaign of cyberattacks, sabotage and other covert operations across the bloc. "Europe's democracies are facing a growing number of threats," European justice Commissioner Michael McGrath told POLITICO. "We are strengthening our capacity to anticipate and detect threats, improve early warning and ensure that Europe can respond quickly and collectively when our democratic resilience is tested." The talks among EU diplomats and ministers have focused on deploying emergency response teams, freeing up pockets of EU money to help the affected state, and how EU institution leaders should communicate, one EU official said.
"We have to be prepared for something serious," a senior EU diplomat said. "Unfortunately, Leipzig showed us that a very serious incident, something that causes multiple casualties, is not out of the question." A second EU official added: "Given the scope and scale of Russia's action there are bound to be casualties sooner than later. It's sheer luck there haven't been any yet." The bloc is reeling from near-daily reports of so-called hybrid attacks — a label used by the EU and NATO to describe subversive activity that falls below the threshold of a direct act of war.
On Tuesday, several sailors were declared missing after their ship was sunk by drones in the Black Sea, according to Bulgarian officials. This followed the Leipzig airport incident, a suspicious fire at a Polish ground-link station handling Starlink communications, and a plot to plant incendiary devices in commercial transport hubs around the EU and U.K., alongside regular airspace violations. "It is quite obvious that when Russia is using more and more lethal tools to test our preparedness and willingness to take counter measures, at some point there will be casualties," said Teija Tiilikainen, director of the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats.
"At some point, intentionally or unintentionally, this is what happens." If several EU or NATO-member citizens are killed in what appears to be an attack, the pressure to act will be overwhelming on both institutions. "We're very afraid that at some point an allied life" will be taken, said one NATO diplomat, which will make the "pressure very high" to act. Yet EU-level discussions are prompting criticism from some capitals that the EU is overstepping its security role and potentially duplicating NATO's core functions, the transatlantic alliance that has underpinned European security for 80 years.
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