The Head of Sector for Hybrid Threats at the European External Action Service (EEAS), Vilmos Hamikus, argued, on Thursday 24 September, for a more proactive European Union in the fight against such threats.
“So far we have mostly been reactive, we have been under attack and we have adapted”, he explained at a hearing before the European Parliament’s special committee on foreign interference in all democratic processes in the EU. According to him, in the last four years, Europeans have been in a learning process.
“Now we want to be proactive and develop strategic predictability”, Hamikus said.
To this end, his services are trying to raise awareness of the hybrid threat among all government or Commission authorities. The aim is also to make the issue truly cross-cutting in all policies.
While supporting the inclusion of civil society in the reflection, the Head of the Sector felt, however, that there was still so much to be done to develop a coherent national approach - at the level of governments - that civil society could not yet be included.
“This is clearly the next step, but you can’t develop a societal approach if there is not a robust response at the government level”, he explained.
Mr. Hamikus recalled that while the responsibility lies at the level of the Member States, the EU can help increase resilience and provide good practice. “Collaboration among Member States is encouraged and we are willing to play a facilitating role”, he said.
For his part, Lutz Güllner, Head of Division for Strategic Communications and Information Analysis at the EEAS, spoke about disinformation and the teams set up by the EU since 2015 to fight disinformation.
The EU has set up three ‘Stratcom’ Task Forces: one on the Eastern Partnership countries, with 16 members, since 2015; one on the southern neighbourhood, which was set up in 2017 and has six members; and lastly, a team of seven people on the countries of the Western Balkans, since 2017. The EEAS also has a horizontal team of four members. Finally, a network of 27 ‘Stratcom’ officers has been set up in neighbouring countries.
While the European Parliament has repeatedly called for a larger budget for these ‘Stratcoms’, Mr Güllner put more emphasis on the political aspect. “I have a small team that, with little means, does exceptional work. (...) What is needed is not more money, but a clear political mandate”, he said. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)