Dendias Warns Europe: Stop Treating Peace as Guaranteed
Greek Defense Minister Nikos Dendias told European leaders Tuesday that the continent must stop treating peace as a given and move from "strategic ambiguity" to concrete collective defense, delivering the message at the Europa-Forum Wachau 2026 in Krems, Austria.
Dendias argued that war, geopolitical revisionism, cyber threats, energy instability and migration pressure have exposed how fragile post-Cold War security assumptions really were. He said no European country can handle modern hybrid threats on its own, and that future conflicts will be decided by artificial intelligence, drone capabilities, speed and resilient networks, not traditional military mass.
Greece already spends more than 3% of GDP on defense — one of the highest rates in both NATO and the EU.
On Greece's own defense posture, Dendias pointed to the country's "Agenda 2030" overhaul as a model for what European defense reform should look like. He specifically highlighted the domestically developed "Centaur" anti-drone system and said Greece plans to sharply expand its domestic drone production capacity in the coming years.
Dendias also pushed back on how the EU's SAFE defense financing instrument is being structured, warning that its current form contains serious weaknesses. He cautioned against interpretations that could allow SAFE funding to indirectly benefit defense industries in countries that threaten EU member states, a thinly veiled reference to Turkey, and called for a reformed "SAFE 2" framework with fewer fiscal and bureaucratic constraints.
Greece already spends more than 3% of GDP on defense, one of the highest rates in both NATO and the EU. Dendias framed that spending not as a burden but as an investment in industrial capacity, technological expertise and economic resilience.
He also thanked Austria for its support during the 2020 Evros border crisis, describing that episode as a deliberate attempt to weaponize migration pressure against Greece and the broader European Union.
After the forum, Dendias met Austrian Defense Minister Klaudia Tanner to discuss expanding bilateral cooperation in defense innovation and regional security.
