These are the new faces at the helm of NATO and defence in the EU
The geopolitical environment and, to some degree, also chance, have meant that two veteran European politicians with governance experience have been chosen within a short time of each other to captain the defence structures of two very important international organisations on a global scale.
One is former Lithuanian Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius, who served in the post from 1999 to 2000 and again from 2008 to 2012 as leader of the Homeland Union party. He is the nominee of the re-elected President of the European Commission, Germany's Ursula von der Leyen, to be the EU's first Defence and Space Commissioner. Along with competitiveness, defence is one of the two priorities of the new European legislature that is about to begin.
The other is also a former prime minister, in this case of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte who, after 14 uninterrupted years at the head of four coalition governments between 2010 and 2024, has just taken up his new post as secretary general of the Atlantic Alliance, the largest, most powerful and most influential global defence organisation.
At 57, the liberal Rutte succeeds Norway's Jens Stoltenberg, 65, who is handing over the post after being reappointed four times and remaining at the helm of the Alliance for ten years, from 1 October 2014 to 31 September 2024. In that long period, the Scandinavian has manoeuvred to refocus NATO, deal with Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and take action on the subsequent invasion of Ukraine in 2022. de Ucrania en 2022.
With Mark Rutte's inauguration ceremony at NATO headquarters in Brussels on 1 October, the veteran Dutch politician inherits a NATO that is both strengthened and worried. Finland and Sweden, once anchored in neutrality, now form NATO's ranks, member states' defence budgets are on the rise, but Central and Eastern European nations remain fearful that Russia could launch a surprise attack on one of them.
Seeking to strengthen Indo-Pacific alliances
Internally, Mark Rutte is responsible for leading NATO's consultation and decision-making processes and chairing high-level meetings, especially those of the North Atlantic Council, the Alliance's main political body. A staunch Atlanticist, he has already expressed confidence that he will be on good terms with whoever the new occupant of the White House is. ‘I worked with Donald Trump for four years, I've been in close talks with Kamala Harris and I respect them both a lot,’ he said.
On the external front, Rutte has been transformed overnight into the public face of NATO, as he made clear at his first press conference, where he has already outlined his three priorities: strengthening transatlantic defence capabilities, continuing to support Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression, and responding to global challenges.
In his opening remarks, he stressed the need for a ‘more robust transatlantic defence industry’ and ‘enhanced cooperation with our partners in the Indo-Pacific’. In this regard, he anticipated that, for the first time, the defence ministers of Australia, Korea, Japan and New Zealand will participate in a meeting of the Alliance at the end of October. Because ‘China, with its support for the Russian military industry, is a decisive facilitator of Russia's war in Ukraine (...) and cannot continue to fuel the conflict without this affecting its interests and reputation’, he stressed.
Within the European Union, the man with a somewhat similar fate to Mark Rutte is the Lithuanian Andrius Kubilius, a politician with nationalist and conservative roots, who until the recent European elections was the head of the European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs and also of the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy.
At the age of 69, he is the person in whom Ursula von der Leyen has placed her trust to be the first European Commissioner for Defence and Space with the task of ‘working on the development of the European Defence Union and on boosting our industrial and investment capacity’.
More European defence with NATO
Unlike the Dutchman Rutte, who is at the helm of a 75-year-old organisation, Andrius Kubilius faces an arduous and complex mandate, given that the EU has no direct competence in defence matters. Member states remain responsible for their national defence and armed forces, while NATO remains ‘the pillar of our collective defence’, Ursula von der Leyen reiterates.
Kubilius is not yet in the post to which he has been appointed. He has to wait for the European Parliament to give its approval in the coming weeks to him and the new commissioners, after analysing their curricula vitae, political leanings and whether they have any conflicts of interest. This is not a mere formality. Among those nominated by Ursula von der Leyen in 2019, the European Parliament said ‘no’ to three of the proposed commissioners.
Among the most important tasks assigned to Andrius Kubilius are closer coordination with NATO, improving European infrastructure to facilitate military mobility and creating more joint European projects. He will also address the EU's defence budget shortfall, which currently stands at around 1.5 billion euros, an amount that Von der Leyen considers ‘too low and inefficient’.
In coordination with the incoming vice-president and high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, Kaja Kallas, 47, former prime minister of Estonia between January 2021 and July 2024, the two are to present the White Paper on the Future of European Defence within the first 100 days of the legislature. The document is to include concrete proposals to boost and strengthen European industrial capabilities, as Von der Leyen believes that EU countries ‘spend too much abroad and therefore we must create a single defence market’.
In the previous government team in Brussels, the commissioner for the internal market, the Frenchman Thierry Breton, had been responsible for launching the industrial side of defence and increasing the production of large-calibre munitions, a task that now falls under Kubilius's purview. In Spain, in view of the path set by Brussels, the Directorate General for Defence Industry Strategy and Innovation has been created within the Secretary of State for Defence, under the management of Air Force Lieutenant General Miguel Ivorra.
