European Commissioner Andrius KUBILIUS in Hamburg, Germany for the Military Schengen 2026 Conference

Name: European Commissioner Andrius KUBILIUS in Hamburg, Germany for the Military Schengen 2026 Conference
Uploaded: 2026-10-07T11:32:33+00:00
Duration: 1031 s

00:02 - 04:13

Speaker 1

Good afternoon to everybody. Really, it's a pleasure to be together with you in Hamburg in this very important conference. And really pleasure to speak about military mobility because everybody knows how important is Hamburg, Hamburg port in general for economy, but also for whole landscape of European military mobility. And we need to discuss military mobility not as theoretical issue, but as an urgent and most important issue of our deterrence capability. Why?

Because Russia is still not being deterred. Next year, Russia will allocate 180 billion euro for its 2027 military budget, which will be by 33% bigger than the budget for this year. In purchasing power parity terms, Russia next year will spend the same amount or even a little bit more than all the EU member states are going to spend together, around 500 or 550 billion euro. Russia is still outproducing us in defense industrial production. Russia is able to rapidly make military technological innovations like new types of drones.

If the day X would come in terms of Russian possible aggression, we need to understand that we will face a battle-tested Russian army with ability to use 10 million drones per year. Simple arithmetic is saying that around of 30,000 drones per day, with a war economy and a stronger army than they had in 2022. Russia is preparing for a long war and confrontation. Why I am telling you this? Because our defense readiness has to speed up.

Council and Parliament and European Parliament have to understand this and deliver, and also on a national level, and especially on military mobility. Because what I am quoting always as General John Pershing, commander of the American army in the First World War, have said, I quote: "Infantry wins battles, logistics wins the wars." And I absolutely subscribe to those words of General John Pershing. In Europe, the defense of each country depends on the collective European defense architecture, in which the movement of troops and equipment between different countries and regions has crucial importance. That is why our capability to deter aggression depends not only on how much we spend on defense, not only on what our defense industry can produce and what our militaries are procuring, but essentially and existentially on how, at what speed, in what quantities we can move military goods across the European continent.

That is why the Commission has understood the importance of military mobility issues and has delivered. We delivered a long-expected military mobility package. It was expected by NATO, by European defense forces, by European generals, by logistics commands. And we delivered a carefully calibrated but also ambitious proposal how to tackle military mobility issues in Europe.

In order to understand how heavy the challenge of military mobility is in Europe, we need to understand that military mobility is not only about how to speed up permits on the borders, customs procedures, or how to improve transport infrastructure, roads, railways, bridges, or tunnels. This is really important, but it's not everything. First of all, we need to see the volume of what would need to be moved. The best way to do that is to look into NATO defense plans, which are public. The so-called NATO force model in Europe is based, I just remind you, is based on the three-tier readiness structure where forces are organized by how quickly they can deploy.

04:13 - 05:57

Speaker 2

Tier first, first tier, 10 days. During 10 days, those forces need to be deployed, and that is rapid reaction forces, 100,000 troops per 10 days. Second tier, 30 days, follow-on forces, 200,000 troops. And third tier, 180 days, large-scale reinforcement, 500,000 and even more troops. Just to understand what it means to move such amounts of troops, let's look into several publicly available numbers from experts, from industry, on the possible size of convoys or the need of transportation means.

Land roads: to move one brigade, from 3,000 to 7,000 troops, it will take from 500 to 1,500 vehicles. For land movement on roads of one average-sized brigade, around 4,500 troops, it may require 500 non-roadable vehicles, 1,500 roadable vehicles, 800 dangerous goods containers, and 500 general cargo containers. Convoys for such a land transportation of one brigade, one brigade, parked nose-to-nose, may be up to 12 kilometers length. For land movement of the first tier NATO forces, as I said before, 100,000 troops, which means 20 brigades, convoys of trucks will be 20 times longer, 240 kilometers length. Of course, that will not happen, but I am just showing theoretically what does it mean to move such amount of troops, just for us to understand.

05:57 - 07:23

Speaker 1

On railways: for a large-scale military deployment, for one brigade equipment using railways, we may need up to 20-40 dedicated train formations. To move one brigade using railroads requires from 350 up to 600 plus special flatbed wagons. And that is big challenge for all of us because, as we understand, again from public sources, those flatbeds, special flatbeds, are in quite a big deficit. Moving a light division, 15,000 soldiers, requires up to 200 trains with 8,400 loaded wagons. Now on maritime: for maritime transportation of NATO third tier forces, around 200 vessels might be necessary.

The ships will need protection by escort units, mine hunters, icebreakers, and supply vessels. Presently, European Union depends on 121 vessels of the US Navy Sealift Command. The challenge for us, EU institutions, NATO, member states, in military mobility are immense in the volume and the need of proper preparedness and effective coordination. And that is why we propose an ambitious and well-balanced military mobility package, which I would rather call the military logistics package. And we cannot afford to relax its ambition or to delay.

07:23 - 17:08

Andrius Kubilius

I hope that Irish presidency of EU will do the utmost to successfully conclude trilogue negotiations still this year. We hope that the Council and European Parliament will work together to achieve an ambitious outcome. Let me remind you what this military mobility package is about. First of all, on regulatory barriers to military mobility. In our military mobility package, we are first of all breaking down legal obstacles to military mobility.

Today, we have freedom of movement, but not if you are a soldier. If you are a brigadier general and today you get the order to move out your brigade, you will be first of all buried in paperwork. In some member states, you need to give 45 days advance notice for troop movements. In one member state, customs officials stopped allied tanks because they were too heavy. They had to go by boat instead, weeks instead of days.

On top of bureaucracy, there is fragmentation, not only nationally, but even regionally. Different rules, different procedures for every member state, causing delay upon delay. It can take months to move from Spain to the Baltics. And that is really not acceptable. That will not deter Putin.

So we are now bringing unity to our military mobility, moving closer towards what we can call a military Schengen, replacing a patchwork of 27 different national rules with one single clear European rulebook, ensuring that the same rules apply to military transport, whether carried out by the armed forces themselves or by civilian contractors for the armed forces, facilitating military transport of dangerous goods and of overweight and oversized cargo, cutting movement from weeks and months to days, with one single European permit valid to the entire European Union, to be issued within three days at most, an ad hoc permit or standing permit which is valid until revoked, so that they don't need to be renewed all the time. In addition, streamlined customs formalities and use of one single customs document, and to speed things up, a single digital platform for cross-border transport permissions and customs formalities. Once the platform will be established, all ad hoc and standing permission procedures will be done through the digital tool. On EMERS, what we call EMERS. If there is a real emergency situation, then waiting three days for permits is still too long.

For times of emergency, we have a completely new system which we are proposing, called the European Military Mobility Enhanced Response System, or EMERS, which can be activated by the Council. Key points: no more permits to move soldiers in that case. It will be enough to notify six hours notice the country you need to cross. EU-wide priority access to transport networks for the military. Military exemptions for traffic restrictions.

Derogations from rules on driving times and rest periods, and faster customs procedures. On dual-use infrastructure. Here in Hamburg, close to the harbor, let me stress the issue of infrastructure, one of the cornerstones of military mobility. So I welcome the plans for dual-use investment, civilian and military, into Hamburg harbor. The mayor says 8 billion euro is needed, especially for bridges.

We will invest also on the European level to remove choke points on 500 hotspots along Europe's four military mobility corridors. We propose for the next multi-annual European budget, MFF, 17 billion investment for dual-use transport infrastructure. And this is really big increase if to compare with what we are spending today. Investment that will be also beneficial to our citizens: better roads and bridges, better rail connections will be good for travel and trade. But only if we remain ambitious.

So I call on all of you to fully support our proposal for the next MFF. On the solidarity pool. To make things concrete, let's go back to that brigadier general. You can have all the permits you want, but if you don't have trucks, trains, boats or planes, you will go nowhere. As military experts say, there is no army in the world able to possess all the means of transportation needed for the army in the case of a major crisis.

The number which I was speaking about earlier are clear proof that those military experts are speaking the truth. That's why we also proposed a solidarity pool, so member states can share means of transport, like lorries, flatbed rail carriages, cargo ships, cargo planes. Centrally coordinated and registered in advance, with an overview of all registered capabilities in the Union, both public and private, that can operate 24/7. We propose that EU member states can register capabilities on a voluntary basis, unless Union funding was used for procurement of that capability. And the Union will register dual-use capabilities, European Union capabilities or European Union contracted services with commercial operators.

Also, we propose that the European Competitiveness Fund in the next MFF would be able to give financial support or financial incentives for pooling and sharing. In short, if a crisis comes, there will be a massive demand of transport means. The solidarity pool will be essential to manage the supply and demand of vehicles for military mobility, to avoid duplication, to make most efficient use of the resources we have, and it's clear, our defence and our deterrence depends on it. And on defence and sustainability of transport infrastructure. And we must protect our critical infrastructure, which is already under attack.

Here in Germany, you see all the evidence, the attack on Leipzig airport, on the rail networks. Critical infrastructure should be identified by member states under coordination of Commission according to our military mobility package. Member states will have the responsibility to protect strategic dual-use infrastructure, including our harbours like Hamburg. A few words on governance. It is clear, moving troops across Europe will be a massive undertaking.

We need to be able to manage it. That is why we also proposed a system of governance, with national coordinators and a military mobility transport group ensuring a whole-of-government approach at EU level. The group is to be chaired by the Commission and to advise the Commission on the implementation of the military mobility regulation, and to work together with NATO, to coordinate national actions and investment priorities and build mobility assets, and to coordinate annual readiness checks and stress tests and to make sure military movement is fast and efficient. In closing, let's also be clear what does not change. Member states and NATO are in charge of defence.

NATO makes defence plans and determines what capabilities are needed, identifies where forces need to move. But those plans will work only if we can move soldiers and equipment across the continent and fast. We need our European military mobility rules to defend Europe according to NATO plans and at a high level of ambition. Now we are at a decisive moment.

As I said, trilogue negotiations are taking place between Parliament, European Parliament and Council. And now there's a possibility that our proposals will be watered down, its ambition diminished and impact diluted. A watered-down regulation also means watered-down deterrence. For the solidarity pool to work, it needs to be clear and predictable. We need to be able to identify the gaps.

For the emergency system to work, it must be applied everywhere in the entire Union in the same way. No fragmentation, no opt-outs. That will only complicate things and slow us down. For our military mobility to work, there needs to be European Union added value. That can be achieved only with a clear role for the European Union itself.

So I call on you to support our proposal, to make sure ambition stays high. Let me remind you, NATO's largest post-Cold War exercise, Steadfast Defender, was 90,000 troops over five months. To move 500,000 troops in 180 days across Europe, we have never done it before. And we might need to do so sooner than we realize, sooner than we like. This is a challenge we have never faced before, that our generation, our Union has never faced before, never.

NATO alone cannot do it. Member states alone cannot do it. Military and civilians alone cannot do it. But as a Union together, we can. Thanks a lot.