Europe’s Answer to Hybrid Threats Must Begin at Home

At three facilities belonging to France’s national blood service, staff recently had to protect medical supplies from the refrigeration equipment meant to preserve them. Hackers had altered the controls. Employees intervened, and no blood products were lost. Elsewhere, attacks affected supermarket cooling systems, while bomb hoaxes disrupted passenger flights. The targets were different; each touched something people ordinarily expect to be safe.

Speculation about responsibility has ranged from possible state involvement to independent groups. No common organizer has been publicly established across these incidents. Investigators must determine whether they are connected. For Europe’s leaders, however, uncertainty about the perpetrators should not obscure the vulnerabilities within their own power to address.

The danger of hybrid threats extends beyond the immediate damage. Repeated disruptions can encourage people to believe that their governments are losing control of ordinary life. That impression may be harder to resist when it accompanies worries about employment, energy bills and an economic future that seems increasingly uncertain. An attacker need not have created those anxieties to exploit them.

This does not mean Europe’s difficulties caused the attacks. Strong societies are targeted too. But resilience depends partly on whether citizens trust their institutions to solve problems. The European Commission’s competitiveness report identifies expensive energy, fragmented markets and administrative burdens that constrain European businesses. These are longstanding weaknesses, not discoveries made by the latest intruder.

Consider what protecting a European factory actually requires: dependable power, access to investment and the ability to compete across a large market. Electricity networks, supply chains and commercial opportunities extend beyond national borders. A government can improve conditions at home, but it cannot secure all of them alone. Effective national policy increasingly depends on effective European decisions.

That dependence creates a political obligation. Governments cannot keep asking Europe to deliver collective strength while withholding the means to exercise it. Most EU legislation already passes through qualified-majority voting, but unanimity remains necessary in much of foreign and security policy and for the long-term budget. In those areas, one government can prevent the others from acting together.

A veto protects the right to refuse. It does not necessarily protect the ability to achieve anything. When a decision requires collective action, preserving every national veto can leave all members with less practical control over the outcome. The relevant question is therefore how sovereignty can be exercised effectively, not simply where it formally resides.

This is the practical argument for a United States of Europe. Shared strategic responsibilities should come with majority decision-making, common funding and an executive accountable to an elected parliament. Smaller members would need constitutional safeguards, while national and local authorities should retain responsibilities they can discharge effectively. The purpose would be to give Europe the capacity to act where acting separately is insufficient.

Such a settlement would require treaty changes agreed and ratified by all member states under their constitutional procedures. Leadership would mean earning that consent: explaining the powers to be shared, the protections retained and the results citizens could reasonably expect.

For that argument to convince, stronger institutions must also mean less administrative duplication. More decisions, less bureaucracy should describe how the system works. A business should encounter predictable requirements and clear responsibility for approvals. Common energy investment should strengthen cross-border networks and diversify supplies, helping manufacturers obtain reliable power. European authority would deserve support by making those outcomes easier to achieve, rather than multiplying the procedures surrounding them.

That capacity would also give substance to diplomatic independence. Europe would be better placed to assess its interests without first anticipating what a larger power might approve. Broader partnerships across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean could widen its options without requiring the abandonment of existing allies. But cooperation must be worthwhile for both sides. Caribbean calls for European trade arrangements to deliver more for smaller economies make that condition clear.

None of this replaces the immediate work of securing vulnerable equipment. Nor would federal institutions make Europe immune to intimidation. The argument is that protecting public confidence requires both competent security services and governments capable of addressing the difficulties that make each disruption more unsettling.

Europeans should not be asked to recover their confidence through reassurance alone. They need evidence that familiar problems can be resolved. The staff who protected France’s blood supplies had a clear responsibility and the means to act. Europe’s political institutions should be expected to meet the same standard.