EU must acquire all means to defend itself against military aggression, council president says

PHOTO CAPTION: Illustrative photo — Dutch soldiers train with a machine gun from an entrenched position during Exercise Rising Griffin 2022. (NATO photo via Flickr)

BRUSSELS (Reuters) -     Europe must acquire all means to defend itself against military aggression, European Council President Antonio Costa said on Tuesday, adding that peace without defence is an illusion. 

"If Russia considers that Ukraine's borders are just a line on a map, why should it respect any other country's borders?", he said at a European Policy Centre event in Brussels.

The Council president called for boosting NATO's European pillar. 

"Now it's clear that the best way to protect our transatlantic alliance, is to strengthen the European pillar of NATO, is to become more autonomous, to become more sovereign, to be less dependent of others, namely on the United States," he said. 

Europe is dramatically stepping up spending on defence because of concern that the United States, which had guaranteed Europe's security since the end of World War Two, was no longer keen to do so, shifting its attention to the Indo-Pacific.

 (Reporting by Charlotte Van Campenhout, Lili Bayer, Editing by Benoit Van Overstraeten)