The 12th edition of the prestigious national conference Our Security is Not a Given took place in the Prague Castle Ballroom. This year's main topics included the ongoing war in Ukraine, issues of securing the defence of the Czech Republic and Europe, transatlantic cooperation and the support and importance of the Czech defence industry. The conference was held under the auspices of the President of the Republic Petr Pavel, Prime Minister Petr Fiala, Minister of the Interior Vít Rakušan, Minister of Foreign Affairs Jan Lipavský and Minister of Defence Jana Černochová. Oleksandr Kamyshin, Adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, also spoke at the conference and said, among other things, that Czech President Petr Pavel will soon visit Kyiv to discuss strengthening Europe with the Ukrainian President.

The conference was opened by Zbyněk Pavlačík, chairman of the Jagello 2000 association, which is the organizer of this event. "It is important to emphasise that it is absolutely crucial to systematically build the entire security system, its capacities, its capabilities and also the resilience of the entire Czech society, because the percentage spent on defence alone will not ensure security. We have a big task ahead of us. The Atlantic link is crucial and indispensable for our security," Pavlačík said.

The Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala similarly named this issue, pointing out that after years of neglecting its own defence and relativising the Russian threat, only those who are prepared and who take care of their own security can succeed. "First, we must invest more in our defence. Secondly, we need to have a good overview of what is happening in our environment, but equally we need to keep internal security under control, whether it is illegal migration, trust in the state or resilience to hybrid threats. And thirdly, we need to get rid of bureaucratic burdens and push for a strong economy. All three, defence, internal security and a strong economy, must be pursued as if we could never rely on anyone else. It must be our responsibility, it must be our courage," said Fiala, who also said that it was impossible to continue weakening Europe with various regulations linked to the Green Deal. "Today, we have to do a 180-degree turn, because today, regulations are weakening and slowing us down," continued the Prime Minister, according to whom the reason is obvious. "Russia will not stop, we have four to six years," the Prime Minister said.

The historical parallel between the Russian-Ukrainian war and the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Nazi Germany was recalled by Defence Minister Jana Černochová. According to her, sustainable peace must be based on a strong Ukraine and credible security interests. "If Russia senses an opportunity, it will attack again regardless of previous agreements and arrangements - as we have seen many times in the past. History shows that whenever our region has not been firmly anchored, it has been a tempting target for aggressive powers. That is why Russia talks about the need to return the situation in Europe to 1997, when all the post-communist states of Central and Eastern Europe were still outside the structures of NATO and the EU. And we must avoid that," Černochová said, referring to other potential global threats in the Middle East, the Sahel, and the Korean peninsula.

President Petr Pavel then said that the transformation of the world security order will redefine geopolitical relations and strategic priorities, which, in his view, should lead to joint work with the United States. However, according to the President, it is also necessary to be prepared to respond adequately if the US decides to take a different path. In his speech, President Pavel also described it as important to support Ukraine in achieving the most just peace possible so that Russian aggression does not result in the fulfillment of all the aggressor's goals. He also said that in order to defend freedom and democracy, a society must be able to sacrifice something, which may not be immediate casualties, but perhaps increased spending on its own defence. He also called for security threats to be perceived equally by everyone across the political spectrum.

This year's expert panels, which are traditionally part of the conference, focused on increasing defence spending in the Czech Republic and the importance of the defence industry for the economy. National Security Adviser Tomáš Pojar expects the NATO summit in The Hague at the end of June to debate defence spending between 3 and 3.5 % of GDP. Pojar also said he does not consider the broader consensus of 5 % that the United States is talking about to be realistic.

According to the Chief of the General Staff of the Army of the Czech Republic, Gen. Karel Řehka, Russia does not believe that Europe has the will and unity to oppose it. It considers Europe weak, which is dangerous, according to Řehka. The Chief of the General Staff further stated that the time Europe has to prepare to avoid a problem is being shortened. The Russians reportedly need even less than five years to make a miscalculation and cause problems for Europe.

Economist Jana Matesová said she did not see the problem with increasing defence spending as the Czech economy could not afford it. "It is not a problem to find the money, but to convince people that it is really necessary," Matesová said, adding that if the super gross wage had not been abolished, it would have been enough to add one and a half percent of GDP to defence. The best solution, she said, would be to increase taxation on investment property and better invest European money.

For CZ DEFENCE, the Chief of the General Staff of the Czech Armed Forces, Gen. Karel Řehka said that "Every country has it a little differently. It's about what we have to prepare for. But from my point of view, building defence is a long-term thing. By the time a crisis starts, it will be too late to act. I believe that Europe has woken up. I believe that we will now take that last-minute turn and avoid a possible future clash with Russia. But that will only happen if we are strong. It's not just about money. We need to change the rules of the game. With the current purchasing processes, which take years, it won't work."

A frequently mentioned topic at the conference was the creation of a so-called coalition of the willing, which means the possibility of creating a group of states without the participation of some alliance partners, such as the US. "NATO is based on unity and it will always achieve that essential unity. But at the same time, one of the principles on which it is based is strategic ambiguity. And if you look at Article 5, for example, even there it is not necessary for all members to respond in the same way. Of course, there always has to be core values, but it is not always clear in advance how each member will react. So I don't think that the activities of individual states and the Alliance's position are actually contradictory," the Chief of General Staff said.

The key role of the domestic defence industry and its wider importance for the national economy was discussed by Lubomír Kovařík, Chairman of the Defence Industry Section of the Czech Chamber of Commerce, Jiří Šedivý, Executive Director of the European Defence Agency, and Tomáš Kopečný, Government Commissioner for Reconstruction of Ukraine, who recently returned from the front line in Ukraine. We were interested in what the visit of Oleksandr Kamyshyn, Advisor to the President of Ukraine, means for the Czech Republic. "First of all, it is a symbol of what we have built in our relationship over the last three years. It is cooperation between selected industries. The survival of the Ukrainian nation and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians depends on having enough weapons in their hands to defend their country. And the cooperation is largely based on the fact that together we produce things that allow them to defend their lives," Kopecny told our editorial board.

As already mentioned, the conference also dealt with the role and capabilities of the defence industry, so we asked Tomáš Kopečný about Czech-Ukrainian industrial cooperation. "If we talk about Czech-Ukrainian defence and industrial cooperation, it can be divided into three major milestones. The first one was the beginning of supplies. In the second one, in 2022, we agreed to start jointly producing something directly in Ukraine or even in the Czech Republic, but mainly in Ukraine. For example, I signed a cooperation agreement in this area in November 2022 in Kyiv. President Pavel then announced in Kyiv sometime in April 2023 that the negotiations had progressed and today, in March 2025, three factories are already operating there. So the third milestone is that production has actually started. There are a lot of statements or memoranda that something is happening, that something is being planned - such as the production of ammunition, tanks from big Western companies. But these are plans. However, we as the Czech Republic are already at the third milestone," Tomáš Kopečný, the Commissioner for Reconstruction of Ukraine, told CZ DEFENCE.

The Our Security Is Not a Given conference also included a discussion of representatives of all parliamentary political parties, in which various security issues were discussed.