Belgian Defense Minister: Europe has relied on soft power for too long

For too long, Europe has focused on soft power instead of defense. Belgian Defense Minister Theo Franken stated this in an interview with Euronews.

“Europe is in a very difficult situation, both in terms of defense capability and in terms of industrial capacity,” he said. According to him, one of the reasons for this was a long-standing commitment to developing soft power.

“Europe is very good at investing in soft power, in social security, and it’s great to have a pension system, social security systems. When someone gets sick, when someone loses their job, we have everything. But when there is a war or when a hybrid threat arises, we have nothing,” Franken said.

He also admitted that Belgium had long been the "black sheep" in defense spending. “We neglected this for so long that we were like the worst students in NATO classes. We are the founding fathers of NATO; we are the founding fathers of the European Union. I think we were always there for diplomacy, for soft power, but when we started talking about hard power in Belgium, everyone looked the other way,” the minister said.

Belgium reached the NATO threshold of two percent of GDP for defense for the first time in 2025, up from a low of 0.97 percent in 2014. The alliance wants to increase this figure to 3.5 percent by 2035, but the country will remain at two percent until 2029 due to the difficult budget situation.