In April 2025, the EU published its updated internal security strategy, ProtectEU, underlining the reality that the lives of European citizens ‘have become less secure’. Hybrid threats, organised crime networks and terrorist threats from outside the EU have an increasing impact on the EU’s internal security. In addition, the traditional list of threats posed by organised crime and terrorists is expanding, and now includes sabotage, increasing use of ransomware attacks and active financial measures to undermine and destabilise European democracy. In June 2025, soon after the publication of ProtectEU, the UK published its updated National Security Strategy (NSS). The NSS highlights many of the same threats as ProtectEU, and is rooted in addressing similar hostile foreign states and state-sponsored actors. Finance runs as a common thread through the threats states face – and from which they seek to protect themselves. ProtectEU calls for ‘following the money’ as a crucial element of efforts to combat organised crime and terrorism. The UK’s NSS goes further, arguing that ‘all elements of our security are supported by our ability to tackle illicit finance . . . [including from] terrorist networks, serious and organised crime groups, and hostile state actors’. Against this backdrop, in September 2025, the Centre for Finance and Security at RUSI convened a roundtable discussion at RUSI Europe’s offices in Brussels to assess the financial dimension of the internal security threats facing the EU and how finance underpins this wide spectrum of traditional and emerging threats. The discussion considered both the current effectiveness of the EU’s toolkit and responses, and opportunities to strengthen these aspects, in the face of the evolving threat landscape. The discussion featured experts from across the European Commission, European External Action Service (EEAS), Council of the EU, UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, civil society and the private sector.
The Financial Dimension of EU Internal Security Threats | Royal United Services Institute
