Modern challenges, risks and threats to the European Union

The European Union is a unique economic, political and values-based community that has developed into a global actor with increasingly pronounced security ambitions over the past decades. However, in the modern era, the EU faces complex and multifaceted challenges that go beyond the framework of traditional security policy. New forms of threats – such as hybrid and cyber attacks, terrorism, organized crime, energy dependence, climate change and migration crises – have led to the need for a systemic redefinition of the Union’s security strategy. These phenomena are no longer isolated, but interconnected and often intertwined with economic, political and social factors, making security a key foundation for the functioning of the community itself. A special place in the paper is given to the analysis of the consequences of the war in Ukraine, which fundamentally shook the European security architecture and marked a turning point in the EU’s foreign and defense policy. The Russian aggression in 2022 led to a serious rethinking of the concept of European security, revealing the limitations of existing common defense mechanisms and the Union’s dependence on the United States. As a result of this conflict, the fragmentation among member states, different perceptions of threats and disagreements about the degree of necessary integration in the field of defense are increasingly visible. The European Union is trying to respond to these challenges by adopting strategic documents such as the Strategic Compass for Security and Defense (2022) and the White Paper on Defense Capabilities (2025), which promote the concept of “strategic autonomy” and the development of its own response capabilities. However, despite efforts to strengthen the common security policy, the EU remains strongly influenced by the USA and burdened by internal divisions. The future of the European Union will depend on its ability to preserve unity, overcome institutional weaknesses, and build its own, coherent, and resilient security architecture in the face of an increasingly unstable global order.