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With the approach of June’s European Parliament elections, the grand coalition of the European People’s Party (EPP), the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D), and Renew Europe faces a watershed moment. The EPP’s recent decision to nominate European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen for a second term, far from being merely procedural, could have profound implications for Europe as it confronts internal and external challenges of unprecedented magnitude.

Together with its coalition partners, the EPP has steered the EU through multiple shocks over the past five years, including the Covid-19 pandemic, heightened tensions with China, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the subsequent energy crisis. The EU’s achievements during this period have highlighted not only the resilience of the European community but also the crucial role of unity and the need to preserve the current coalition.

Moreover, these challenges have underscored the importance of upholding the intergenerational contract and foundational values that underpin the EU. This is particularly important in the face of mounting pressures from extremists and populists who advocate simplistic, short-term fixes instead of tackling long-term, complex challenges.

The EU’s agenda will likely remain dominated by persistent crises, necessitating a unified and thoughtful approach. The EPP-led coalition could play a crucial role, fostering stability and economic development while navigating the challenges Europe must face.

One of the main challenges will be the fight against climate change. Over the past few years, European leaders have worked together to protect the environment for future generations while striving to boost economic competitiveness. This collective effort has led to a significant reduction in transport-sector emissions and the adoption of the ambitious Fit for 55 plan, a comprehensive legislative package aimed at reducing the EU’s net greenhouse-gas emissions by at least 55% from 1990 levels by 2030. The plan includes binding targets for boosting renewable-energy production, reducing energy consumption, and lowering emissions in key industries.

Moreover, today’s geopolitical crises have brought security back to the top of Europe’s agenda, with EU member states aiming to de-risk energy value chains by focusing on renewables and efficiency measures. This strategic pivot reflects a broader commitment to sustainability that resonates beyond Europe’s borders, influencing energy policies around the world.

But this shift is not just about achieving climate goals. By focusing on renewable energies and de-risking supply chains, the EU also aims to shield European citizens and industries from the volatility of global energy markets, which are often influenced by geopolitical uncertainties. The bloc’s commitment to renewables is exemplified by Germany’s Energiewende (energy transformation) policy, as well as robust government investments in renewable energy in Denmark, the Netherlands, and Sweden. These strategic investments have also bolstered the competitiveness of these countries’ energy industries.

This is important because Europe is not alone in pursuing a sustainable future. Following the establishment of the EU’s emissions trading system, countries like Japan and Brazil have set up their own carbon markets. This global sustainability drive, while commendable, also means increased competition, again highlighting the need for unity as European countries seek to capitalise on the opportunities created by the green transition while striving to meet ambitious climate targets and tackle the complex challenges that come with implementation.

While unity is the EU’s greatest asset in the fight against climate change, the EPP’s leadership, in particular, must continue to play a central role in advancing the EU’s climate agenda. This is no time to backtrack. The expansion of the EU carbon market into new sectors like maritime transport, and the bloc’s prominent role in international climate negotiations, are prime examples of its proactive approach. Faced with the existential threat of climate change, EPP, S&D, and Renew leaders must draw on their experience, knowledge, and ambition to defend the bloc’s core values against rising populism and guide Europe through the challenging times ahead.

Far from being a distant threat, climate change is already wreaking havoc across Europe. At this critical juncture, Europe requires unity, vision, and bold leadership more than ever. The future of the bloc, the welfare of its citizens, and the success of its industries are in our hands. For responsible political parties, now is no time to make Europe a victim of partisan paralysis.

This week, Donald Tusk won a vote of confidence in Poland’s parliament to lead a new government as the country’s new prime minister, following a failed bid by the incumbent, Mateusz Morawiecki, to remain in that role.

The vote provoked a visibly nervous reaction from the leader of the outgoing populist government, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who stormed up to the rostrum to denounce Tusk, a former prime minister who subsequently served as president of the European Council, as a ‘German agent’. Kaczynski’s behaviour since the October election has been all too revealing: the all-powerful national populist leader of the past eight years has lost control—of himself as well as of the country.

Kaczynski can thank his own hateful policies for his electoral defeat on 15 October (following a record voter turnout of 75%). Though his Law and Justice (PiS) party won more seats than any other single party, Tusk has built a broad four-party coalition with a solid parliamentary majority. He is now taking great pains to show his appreciation for his partners, including by creating 26 ministerial positions in the new government.

Tusk’s administration will need to show consistency and unity to deal with Poland’s many crises. After years of PiS illegally packing major judicial institutions with political cronies, a top domestic priority is to restore the rule of law. Tusk also promises a ‘return to Europe’, prompting celebrations across the European media, especially in Germany, a key neighbour with which Kaczynski had been picking absurd fights.

Paradoxically, the PiS government was generally an easy partner for Germany, since it isolated Poland within the European Union. While Tusk’s victory was greeted with joy in Berlin, German leaders surely know they will be dealing with a serious, seasoned player who will defend Poland’s interests more effectively than PiS ever did.

In his exposé (a speech outlining the new government’s plans), Tusk looked directly at PiS’s parliamentary deputies and made clear that no one in the EU will be able to push him around. In doing so, he took the air out of PiS’s aggressive propagandising about him being subordinate to Berlin, and he sent a clear signal to both the German and French governments. He has already announced that he will oppose proposed EU treaty changes designed to remove the unanimity requirement, warning against ‘naive, sometimes even unbearable Euro-enthusiasm’ behind efforts to ‘change the character of the EU’.

In terms of foreign policy, Tusk says he will focus primarily on maximising support for Ukraine from Poland and other EU and NATO states. He didn’t mince words: ‘I cannot listen to politicians who talk about being tired of the situation in Ukraine. They are tired, they say it to the face of President Volodymyr Zelensky. Poland’s task is to loudly and firmly demand that the West fully resolve and help Ukraine in this war.’ There was a clear message here for Hungary’s pro-Kremlin prime minister, Viktor Orban, whom Tusk knows well and once considered a friend.

Still, Tusk also declared that his government will show ‘cordial and benevolent assertiveness when it comes to Polish interests’ on the Polish–Ukrainian border, where Polish truckers have set up blockades to prevent their lower-paid Ukrainian counterparts from entering. Tusk says he will offer an immediate solution to this problem, which is destroying the Ukrainian economy.

On the fraught issue of immigration, Tusk showed during his stint as president of the European Council that he has a strong, principled position on the matter. His policy can be summed up as ‘borders first’. All borders must be secured before a properly functioning migration and asylum system can be established, though the authorities can ‘protect the Polish border and be humane at the same time’. His government intends to seal the border, but also to end the illegal practice of ‘push-backs’, which has cost the lives of more than 50 people on the Polish–Belarusian border in recent years.

The importance of this issue is underscored by the fact that Tusk already has plans to fly to Tallinn and meet with the prime ministers of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. They have many of the same priorities: dealing with the war in Ukraine, securing their borders (all are targets of a Russian and Belarusian hybrid war that includes funnelling immigrants over their borders) and strengthening their cooperation with like-minded governments.

In his exposé, Tusk made sure to mention Finland, signalling a stronger focus on NATO’s northern front. During Tusk’s first government, Radek Sikorski (who is returning as head of the foreign ministry to rebuild Poland’s ruined diplomacy) and Sweden’s then prime minister, Carl Bildt, forged a special relationship. Now, Tusk wants to do the same within NATO. It is a sensible strategy, since he can’t hope for cooperation within the Visegrad group, owing to populist spoilers like Orban and Slovakia’s new prime minister, Robert Fico.

Poland today is like a ship that needs to be rebuilt while at sea. The situation is not unlike 1989. The biggest difference is that the economy today is in crisis, rather than in ruins. Still, other challenges are just as difficult, if not more so. Back then, Russia (or, rather, the Soviet Union) was on its knees, whereas now it is waging wars of aggression. There is no Polish politician today who could handle these challenges better than Tusk.

Government efforts to access private communications are nothing new. In decades past, such attempts at prying were often justified on national-security grounds. Today, however, policymakers point to child safety and disinformation as reasons to limit privacy protections. Established democracies are often leading this charge, inadvertently paving the way for the world’s autocrats.

But people around the world aren’t taking these policies lying down. They speak out, using events like Global Encryption Day to highlight the importance of privacy and security not just for their own lives but for their communities and societies. And as vociferous opposition continues to stymie government efforts to expand surveillance powers, it’s become clear that public pressure works.

Encryption, which scrambles digital data so that it can be read only by someone with the means to decode it, has become ubiquitous because it keeps information confidential and secure while authenticating the identity of the person with whom one is communicating. Today, billions of people use encryption to send digital messages and emails, transfer money, load websites and protect their data. The gold standard in security is end-to-end encryption (E2EE), since only the participants have access to the data—not even the service provider can decipher it.

Despite its immense value and global appeal, encryption is under threat worldwide. It is used by law-abiding citizens to protect themselves, but also by bad actors to hide their malicious activities. For this reason, law-enforcement authorities oppose encryption designs, especially E2EE, that prevent them from accessing data.

But even after decades of research, there’s still no known way to grant law enforcement access without undermining encryption’s privacy and security features. The makers of encrypted devices and services have therefore resisted calls to build in ‘backdoor’ government access, which would make all of their users more vulnerable.

The harmful online activities that concern police don’t happen only in encrypted spaces. Hate speech, disinformation and other objectionable content remain a pernicious problem on social-media platforms and other sites, motivating a worldwide legislative push to force tech companies to improve their services. The British Parliament, for example, recently passed the Online Safety Bill after several turbulent years during which civil-society pressure changed its scope significantly. The final version, which is awaiting royal assent, focuses mainly on the removal of illegal content and mitigating risks to children.

Yet the bill still has serious flaws. For example, parliament failed to include language safeguarding encryption. Moreover, the law gives Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, the authority to compel social-media platforms and messaging services to mass scan their users’ files and communications for evidence of child sexual abuse.

No one contests that fighting child exploitation is immensely important. But Ofcom’s power covers E2EE messaging services, which, by definition, can’t be accessed by service providers. Thus, the only way these services could comply with an Ofcom order is by making fundamental changes to their encryption design.

In other words, the bill gives Ofcom the power to force service providers to undermine their own encryption. Apple, Meta and Signal have all promised to pull their E2EE apps from the UK rather than comply with any government order to diminish their users’ privacy and security. In response, Ofcom has publicly vowed not to use its new authority, at least for now.

And with good reason: important bodies have concluded that scanning technologies aren’t sufficiently accurate, would limit fundamental rights and would likely fail the proportionality test—the disadvantages would outweigh the advantages. Furthermore, criminals could easily circumvent these controls by encrypting content with a separate application. Ofcom would be wise to tread carefully, lest it risk the privacy and security of internet users for the sake of unproven and potentially ineffective technologies.

Ofcom’s (supposed) forbearance recalls Australian authorities’ conduct since the passage of a contentious 2018 law granting new governmental powers to compel communications providers to add backdoor access to their products. Civil-society and cybersecurity experts raised alarms about the law’s dangers for privacy and security, and legislators themselves admitted the bill was flawed, but it passed anyway.

Five years later, not a single compulsory notice has been issued. This may reflect a deliberate choice: exercising such a power risks political blowback. Wield the sword too enthusiastically, and it might be taken away; better to keep it sheathed in favour of other, less controversial tools. Then again, government forbearance might also indicate that the controversial new power was unnecessary in the first place.

Public scrutiny of government powers keeps them in check. That’s how a democracy is meant to work. In promising not to use its new tool, Ofcom appears to have grasped that the government’s legitimacy is at stake. But as the UK bill inspires similar legislation in other countries, some of which are less democratic and have a track record of weaponising digital technologies against their citizens, this nuance will likely be lost.

The first test will come in the European Union, where legislators are fighting over a draft regulation to expand tech companies’ child-safety obligations. Like the UK bill, the proposed Child Sex Abuse Regulation has already gone through numerous revisions, as member states lock horns over protecting E2EE.

Derisively called ‘chat control’, the draft regulation has been widely decried for potentially forcing European service providers to scan all public and private communications, which would amount to an illegal general monitoring obligation. Recent reporting stoked these concerns by revealing that Europol, the EU’s law-enforcement agency, requested unlimited access to and use of the data produced beyond the purposes identified in the regulation; it appears to have no intention of restraining itself. Continued public pressure is necessary to push for reform of ‘the most criticised draft EU law of all time’.

If government surveillance is a concern in an established democratic entity like the EU, what hope is there for beleaguered democracies like Turkey, India and Brazil, much less autocracies? Fortunately, the public movement in support of encryption is growing, with advocacy groups like the Global Encryption Coalition leading the charge.

By engaging with civil society, technologists and the public, governments can design regulations that respect privacy, data security and freedom of expression while still helping protect users from harm. Doing so is the only way to make sure that the internet works for everyone.

The criticism of Australia’s recent package of assistance to Ukraine was justified. It managed to give a perception of a middling power’s apathy, rather than a regional power’s ambition.

However, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s attendance at next week’s NATO summit in Vilnius is another opportunity for Australia to take a more meaningful package to the core group of nations fighting for Ukraine’s sovereignty and against Moscow’s authoritarian aggression.

Such a package would be consistent with the defence strategic review, which rightly recognised that deterrence must be the cornerstone concept of a national defence strategy, including through working with partners.

Vitally, this is not just about a war on the other side of the world that we can choose to ignore. To help deter aggression in the Indo-Pacific, we must help Ukraine prevail in Europe. Partners must provide the necessary military support to Ukraine to take advantage of the current operational advantage—heightened by the turmoil of the Prigozhin mutiny—and push Russia out of its territory to reclaim its sovereignty.

While the bulk will need to come from NATO members, Australia, as a NATO enhanced opportunities partner, has much to offer. In terms of military equipment, Defence should look harder at what is possible for a friend suffering war crimes, and not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. It’s likely we can afford to send some Hawkeis, and the previously dismissed but now live option of jets in the form of retired F/A-18 Hornet fourth-generation fighters.

Failure in Ukraine would only embolden authoritarian aggression elsewhere in the world and could fatally undermine the notion of collective security. This includes the framework of international laws that provide vital protections and establish inviolable rights for states and civilians alike, also known as the international rules-based system.

Ukraine is fighting for its very survival—as a nation, a people and a culture. It cannot and will not stop. It is fighting within and beyond Ukraine, using every available lever: political, technological, military, economic, diplomatic and, importantly, informational.

Russia’s fight is for a fiction, laid bare in unexpected and dramatic fashion by Vladimir Putin’s own creation, Yevgeny Prigozhin, over an extraordinary weekend. It is a fiction based on Putin’s obsession to restore the Soviet Union, scaffolded by a complex information warfare campaign and enforced with heavy-handed violence at home and atrocities in Ukraine.

Despite an unconvincing start, key actors within NATO—the Baltic states, Poland, the UK and the US—unwound entrenched institutional inertia to provide support. Germany has gone from offering helmets to supplying tanks. This collective success seems to have surprised almost as many in the West as it has Putin (and likely his ‘no limits’ partner, China’s President Xi Jinping).

Australia’s and Japan’s support have been important in reinforcing the fact that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a global issue, not just an Atlantic problem. The Indo-Pacific has a key interest in ensuring that the rule of law prevails, that Ukraine prevails, and that there is no perception that crises and conflicts can be ‘regional’ and ‘contained’.

We cannot stem the contagion of war and the erosion of collective security unless we deny Russia its aims and hold it responsible for its actions.

Ukraine’s partnerships are among the asymmetric advantages it holds—along with the iron will of its people and its masterful use of strategic communications. But the partnerships are only useful if the partners provide real resources that give Ukraine its much-needed military edge.

The longer the war goes on, the more uncertainty there will be—across changes in governments, economies and popular support. The longer it takes to defeat Russia’s aggression, restore the rule of law, and ensure justice for Russia’s crimes, the greater the risk to our efforts to deter any such aggression in the Indo-Pacific.

The time to end the war in Ukraine is now. Russia is significantly weakened, but there are opportunities on which Ukraine can capitalise only if it has greater technological and military assistance from countries like Australia. This could likely enable the Ukrainians to push the Russian military back to its borders.

If it’s clear that Russia is failing to achieve its aims, Xi’s concern will grow. Xi and his military are excellent students of strategy and warfare. The key lesson that Ukraine and the free world want Xi to take away—in the interests of global peace and security—is that unilateral authoritarian aggression will not succeed and comes at an unacceptable cost: economically, militarily and politically. If that can be achieved, deterrence in the Pacific will be significantly bolstered.

Beyond that signal to other authoritarians, the lessons from Ukraine can help Australia build the stronger and more focused force the government wants. It can enable policymakers to better understand necessary industrial capability, and ultimately help deter aggression in the Pacific.

As Albanese heads for Vilnius, he should offer everything Australia possibly can afford, confident that any concerns about depleting our own capability are outweighed by the cost of failing to provide Ukraine with relevant support today.

Estonia’s prime minister, Kaja Kallas, spoke at ASPI’s Sydney Dialogue about how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has highlighted the importance of securing democracies against malicious cyber actors. An edited transcript of her speech follows.

Two years ago, I had the opportunity to chair the first-ever official UN Security Council meeting on cybersecurity. Almost everyone there stressed that all states have already agreed that international law, including the UN charter in its entirety, applies in cyberspace. Only two countries did not. Half a year later, one of those countries, Russia, started its full-scale aggression against Ukraine and violated every rule in the book. For years, we heard predictions that the next big war would be a kind of cyber Armageddon. But instead, Russia brought back large-scale conventional war.

A year ago, the world woke up to the images from Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv, where Russian occupiers had brutally tortured and killed civilians before it was liberated by the Ukrainian forces. The extent of Russia’s war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possibly genocide, today repeat the Kremlin’s atrocities from the past. The fact that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is wanted by the International Criminal Court speaks for itself and shows that no one is immune from responsibility, not even heads of state. During Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, much of our focus has been on conventional war, our vocabularies: Javelins, Stingers, Leopards and HIMARS. Rightly so.

The aggressor must be defeated on the battlefield. Ukraine must win, and for this it needs all the military support it can get, and fast. But as I often stress, in addition to conventional war, Russia is also waging a hybrid war. This includes energy war, information war, cyberwar. We must draw lessons from this both for our own support to Ukraine and to take the leap forward in our own defence. Russian aggression is also a reminder that we actively need to enforce a world where rules still apply and where technology works for, not against, democratic societies and human rights.

First, cyber integrated into regular warfare is now established practice. An hour before Russian tanks rolled over Ukraine’s border, Russia took down Viasat satellites. It left the Ukrainian military without the vital communication line for the first few days. There was also a big spillover effect. For example, across Europe it took offline hundreds of thousands of Viasat TV subscribers. In Germany, it took offline more than 11 giga[watts] of wind turbine generation capacity. This is just one example of direct collateral damage from Russian aggression in the rest of Europe. Russia has also targeted digital infrastructure, data centres, wireless masks, in the same way they have targeted energy infrastructure.

And second, having a trustworthy digital society is a strength, not a weakness. Ukraine’s digital backbone has been invaluable to keep the state running and deliver services online even during the war. Many Russian cyberattacks have not been successful. Not because of luck, but because Ukraine has spent years building up cyber resilience with help from Estonia and others. And now they have lessons to teach us. Some government data systems were physically relocated, simulating Estonia’s pioneering ‘data embassy’ concept.

The Ukrainian state app called Diia was offering citizens a one-stop shop for public services already before the full-scale war. Now it allows Ukraine to keep providing services for millions of refugees spread across Europe or trapped under Russian occupation. It has even replaced physical identity documents. Estonia is already working with Ukrainian partners to adopt the app also for our citizens. Ukraine has also shown us how the skilful use of technology helps to keep society going even during a war: taxes paid, public services available, data kept safe and secure.

Third, there’s currently a real sense of impunity in cyberspace. The blurred lines of responsibility and difficult attribution make cyberattacks more attractive as a tool. Russia continues to use the so-called DDoS diplomacy to send political signals and try to create disruptions beyond Ukraine. We are seeing more activities by state-sponsored malicious cyber groups across the world. Nearly every week Estonia experiences major cyberattacks against government and private services. Some of those have been more severe than the 2007 cyberattacks against Estonia. The effects have been minimal, but only because we are well prepared.

And finally, the private sector has transformed its role during this war. Companies like Palo Alto, Amazon Web Services and others have provided much-needed services and security measures for Ukrainians to defend their e-governance. The analysis provided by companies like Microsoft and Mandiant has been crucial. We need to take public–private partnership to a whole new level. But we also need to manage our mutual expectations. For example, when it comes to the spread of disinformation, social media platforms are still not doing enough. To paraphrase Churchill, due to social media a lie gets half around the universe before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. This is a particular concern in smaller markets like Estonia.

The question now is, where do we go from here? First, we must all be prepared that the cyberwar will continue even after the conventional war ends. The security environment has changed, and we must all adapt rapidly. A strategy of deterrence against cyberattacks or disinformation has not been sufficient. Our focus must be increasingly on resilience, giving our institutions and people the skills to cope in a high-risk environment. As a highly digitalised society, we need to make sure that public services remain available and data is kept safe also during aggression and crisis. Last year Estonia nearly doubled its annual cybersecurity budget. This had instant results. All countries and companies must significantly increase their investment in cybersecurity.

When a few years ago hospitals only had to worry about some drug addict coming and stealing their morphine, now their security risks are cyber. If they are cyberattacked, they could be taken down and there could be civilian casualties. We all talk about cooperation, but this is not enough. The cyber threat picture can change fast, so there is a need for swift information exchange. We need a high level of trust between like-minded countries, service providers and intel agencies to share the kind of information that can prevent attacks elsewhere in the future. For example, in the European Union, the Estonian National Cyber Security Centre is by far the most active in sharing cyber threat information with cyber authorities in other member states. The bad guys share information with each other. So must friends.

Second, we must step up our efforts in cyber capacity building. Closing the digital divide must go hand in hand with building up cyber resilience. Estonia has long shared its knowhow. A recent example is helping to set up a new Cyber Competence Centre for Latin America and the Caribbean in the Dominican Republic. We have also been helping countries in Africa, Central Asia and Eastern Europe build more robust cyber defences over many years.

Third, we must do more to send a clear signal that there’s no place for impunity, not in cyberspace, not anywhere else. Becoming better and faster at attribution is one important thing, but we need to look also at the big picture. Russia’s strategic goals are much bigger than Ukraine. It wants to rewrite the world in its own image where might makes right. In the struggle between democracy and autocracy, the digital sphere is not the sideshow but the frontline.

A few weeks ago, Russia tabled a new cyber warfare treaty at the UN. It aims to undermine the obligations for states under existing international law and justify censorship domestically. But existing international law applies in cyberspace in full. One of the risks I see is sleepwalking into negotiating new legally binding international rules with an outright war criminal. We can’t negotiate new international norms where an aggressor feels like the existing ones are not suitable for its goals. Let’s review and be aware of our engagement with Russia in international organisations.

And finally, it is clear that security can no longer happen in silos. Any serious approach to defend liberal democracies will have to go beyond current institutional limitations. We must build connections and set standards with those we can trust, especially as new technologies like artificial intelligence, 5G and quantum computing become realities. The Indo-Pacific region is at the forefront of this conversation. Those in the region who share the same values should be natural partners for European countries.

We must keep widening the circle of like-minded countries. For too long we have been over-reliant on countries who do not share our values and who weaponise our trust. The era of such dependencies has come to a close. We must be able to shape the age of rapid technological development so that it will serve our societies, including fostering ethical AI and building more trustworthy digital ecosystems. Liberal governments cannot do this alone. It needs to be in partnership with businesses and civil society.

And it also involves big tech putting its money where its mouth is to protect democracy—transparency, better algorithms, adequate content moderation also in smaller markets. We are in it for the long haul. Tyrannies like Russia do not want freedom and democracy to prevail. It is a direct threat to dictatorship. That is why they will keep trying to turn technology into a tool of oppression and a means to destabilise free societies. Our job is to help Ukraine win the war, rethink our connections and ensure impunity does not prevail in any sphere, cyberspace included.