EU considers new security council with UK, Canada, Norway and Ukraine

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STRASBOURG — European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has proposed a European Security Council that would bring EU leaders together with major partners outside the bloc, including the United Kingdom, Canada, Norway and Ukraine.

The idea was set out in her State of the Union address to the European Parliament on 16 September 2026. Von der Leyen said Europe had long discussed a leaders’ format focused on the security of the continent, and that the scale of current risks made it urgent to turn that discussion into a concrete proposal.

The council would be a political forum rather than a military command. It is intended to coordinate responses to threats facing Europe, including Russia’s war against Ukraine and a rise in hybrid incidents such as sabotage, cyberattacks and drone incursions. Von der Leyen stressed that the plans should work alongside NATO, not replace it.

She also proposed an Emergency Security Protocol, described as Europe’s equivalent of NATO’s Article 4. Under that mechanism, any EU member state could trigger urgent consultations so the 27 governments could coordinate a response to incidents that fall short of armed attack but still threaten national security.

In the same speech, von der Leyen singled out Canada for closer ties. With Prime Minister Mark Carney in the chamber, she said she wanted to explore making Canada the EU’s first “associate member” and to move the relationship beyond the existing CETA trade deal into an “alliance for the future” covering defence, energy, critical minerals, technology and the Arctic.

The Commission has not published detailed rules on membership, voting or legal powers. Similar European security-council ideas have circulated since the 1980s and were revived by France and Germany in 2017, but never took hold. Some governments have welcomed a stronger European role; others have already warned that NATO must remain the cornerstone of European defence and that new EU structures should not duplicate the alliance.

What happens next depends on member states. Von der Leyen said the Commission would set out ideas to “make a European Security Council a reality.” Until capitals agree, the proposal remains a political initiative, not a new institution.

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