On 11 June 2026, European Commissioner for Preparedness and Crisis Management Hadja Lahbib, addressing the Federation of Enterprises in Belgium (FEB) virtually from a humanitarian mission in the DRC, called on Belgian businesses to strengthen their resilience against a growing array of threats. She announced that the European Commission will launch a dedicated public-private taskforce on preparedness this autumn, and invited companies to present their work at the Civil Protection Forum in Brussels in early November.
Lahbib painted a stark picture of the risks facing Europe, recalling the 28 April 2025 blackout that plunged 60 million people in Spain and Portugal into darkness for ten hours, costing the Spanish economy an estimated €1.6 billion in lost GDP in a single day. She warned that a coordinated cyberattack could cause far longer disruptions. The Commissioner noted that fewer than four in ten Belgian companies have an advanced risk-management process, according to a recent FEB survey, and questioned whether such exposure remains acceptable.
The speech built on the Union Preparedness Strategy adopted a year ago, which includes 30 concrete actions. Lahbib highlighted four key elements: a first-ever shared EU-wide risk assessment covering climatic, technological, geopolitical and societal threats; a European Stockpiling Strategy covering the full cycle from anticipation to deployment; the adoption of Minimum Preparedness Requirements by year-end, complementing existing frameworks such as the CER and NIS2 Directives without creating new administrative burdens; and the upcoming public-private taskforce.
Lahbib stressed that resilience cannot be the monopoly of governments. She pointed to Nordic examples: Finland's Resilience Centre, where know-how in shelters, drones and autonomous energy systems is turned into export opportunities, and Sweden's public-private structure where hundreds of companies feed supply-chain data to the government. She also cited a German AI research centre in Bremen that developed rescue robots jointly with major companies, calling it "industrial innovation financed by collective preparedness."
On the economic front, Lahbib argued that crisis preparedness is also a competitiveness issue. She noted that the EU already has the world's largest network of free-trade agreements — 45 deals with 80 countries covering nearly 50% of EU trade — and that nearly 900,000 Belgian jobs depend on exports. She mentioned the EU Inc. initiative (a 28th regime) to simplify cross-border expansion, the Savings and Investments Union to channel €10 trillion in idle savings into capital markets, and the Industrial Accelerator Act to ensure public money benefits production and jobs in Europe.
Lahbib also addressed equality as a strategic choice, citing a study that the gender employment gap costs the EU over €390 billion. She defended the Pay Transparency Directive, which worries SMEs, but insisted that ending the 11% average gender pay gap is a matter of fairness and performance. She noted that women's pensions in the EU are on average 25% lower than men's.
on 6 November, the Commission, together with the World Economic Forum, will hold high-level exchanges under the Invest Frontier initiative, aiming to build investor coalitions for stability in fragile countries. She cited Ukraine as a model, where businesses have maintained operations and even developed exportable drone expertise during war.
"BE PREPARED is not just a campaign name. It is a philosophy, a state of mind. I want it to become the brand of a Europe we build together — safer, stronger, more resilient."