There is currently no major military threat to Europe. The principal domestic risks are more national security than defence related.

The first of these is terrorism, which is not an existential risk. I do not believe that there is a risk of nuclear terrorism, but we are ill prepared to resist radiological, biological or chemical attack: the psychological, political and economic repercussions of such an event would be immense. We have had advance warnings of this with the anthrax scare of 2001 (when there had been no material act on French territory), and with the press and public reaction when influenza crises have occurred.

There is also an issue of cyber attacks, both state-sponsored and otherwise. At the same time we see the recrudescence of espionage concerning the major powers; this is also a real danger to the private sector, a domain in which we see a growing threat which could one day represent real risk to the integrity of our civil infrastructure. As is the case for terrorism, we find ourselves in a domain whose management has to be cross-departmental: interior and exterior, military and civil, and so on.