Original Coverage & Source Attribution: www.leadersleague.com
Speaking at the IBA Annual Conference in Copenhagen, former Danish prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt urged Europe to assume greater responsibility for its own security while preserving the transatlantic alliance. She also called for sustained support for Ukraine and greater pressure on Russia.
Europe cannot afford to choose between greater strategic autonomy and a strong NATO, Helle Thorning-Schmidt argued in Copenhagen on 5 October, as geopolitical tensions continue to reshape the continent’s security landscape.
In a keynote conversation with IBA executive director Mark Ellis, Denmark’s former prime minister said European countries should significantly increase their contribution to defence and security, but warned that this should not come at the expense of the NATO framework.
“If you weaken NATO, you strengthen” Russia, China, North Korea and Iran, she said, highlighting the risks of a fragmented Western security architecture.
Europe must take greater responsibility
Thorning-Schmidt, who served as Denmark’s prime minister from 2011 to 2015, described the changing relationship between Europe and the US as one of the defining strategic questions for the continent.
Her message was not that Europe should distance itself from Washington, but that European governments could no longer assume that the US would carry the bulk of the responsibility for their security.
The former Danish leader also addressed the sensitive issue of Greenland, which has become increasingly prominent in the wider debate over Arctic security and transatlantic relations. She said the recent Denmark-Greenland-US agreement should ideally receive the same institutional weight as the post-war arrangements on which it builds, including through parliamentary ratification.
She described the Greenland debate as one of the most significant foreign-policy crises Denmark has faced in decades, while stressing that the new agreement preserves Greenland’s autonomy and territorial integrity.
Ukraine remains a European security issue
The war in Ukraine was another central theme of the discussion.
Thorning-Schmidt argued that Europe should maintain, and potentially intensify, economic pressure on Russia. Among the options she highlighted was the use of frozen Russian state assets to support Ukraine.
She also challenged European governments to think more creatively about how to disrupt Russia’s war economy, which she described as deeply corrupt and linked to the interests of powerful oligarchs.
For Thorning-Schmidt, the consequences of failing to provide sufficient support to Ukraine extend well beyond the country itself. A Russian victory, she suggested, could embolden Moscow to test the security of other European states, particularly in the Baltic region.
Her warning was ultimately about deterrence: Europe should not wait several years before concluding that it should have done more to support Ukraine.
From political leadership to digital governance
The conversation also moved beyond traditional geopolitics to the increasingly complex relationship between technology, democracy and human rights.
As co-chair of Meta’s Oversight Board and a former chief executive of Save the Children, Thorning-Schmidt brought a different perspective to the question of how global platforms should balance freedom of expression against the risk of harm.
She stressed the independence of the Oversight Board and its role in assessing Meta’s decisions against both the company’s own community standards and international human rights principles.
The underlying question, she said, is where individual freedom of expression ends when it begins to affect another person’s freedom or causes harm.
The discussion in Copenhagen therefore extended well beyond Denmark’s borders. From the Arctic to Ukraine and from NATO to social media governance, Thorning-Schmidt’s message was consistent: Europe is entering a period in which political choices, institutional resilience and the defence of democratic values can no longer be taken for granted.
Sophie Stevenard
Image: ©International Bar Association
