The shock of Washington’s recent pressure over Greenland, which included tariff threats and territorial demands, laid bare a deeper structural shift in the transatlantic bargain.
This shift is also reflected in the United States’ 2026 National Defense Strategy, which ranks homeland defence and deterrence of China well above Europe in its hierarchy of priorities. The document signals that Europe must now take primary responsibility for its own security.
The key question then is how Europe should organise itself as a coherent strategic actor within the Alliance. NATO currently lacks a forum where European allies can systematically align their strategic priorities, reconcile internal differences, and present coherent positions as a European entity.
In order for Europe to become a collective strategic protagonist rather than a collection of national force contributions within the alliance, it needs to build its own coordination mechanisms. One model for a starting point already exists in NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group (NPG).
The NPG is often misunderstood since it holds no command authority. It does not issue orders nor supplant NATO’s core political bodies. Instead, it provides a structured forum for consultation, alignment, and agenda-setting on a domain of shared concern. Its power lies in its ability to coordinate and shape thinking before decisions are made.
Such a forum serves as a logical starting point for a European pillar of NATO.
A European Planning Group (EPG) that is consultative, embedded in NATO, and explicitly non-binding could fill a gap in European force planning. Its function would be simple but transformative by allowing European NATO members to coordinate among themselves while also engaging the Alliance as a whole.
This would not be a council issuing decisions nor duplicating the North Atlantic Council. It would not command forces or write war plans (but it could inform them). Like the NPG, it would coordinate and shape positions, not impose outcomes.
The EPG’s core tasks would be political and strategic, not operational. It could align threat assessments across Europe, which today diverge sharply between regions and reconcile competing national capability priorities into shared European positions. It could also enable coherent European inputs into NATO’s defence planning process, rather than twenty-nine loosely coordinated ones.
Most importantly, it would allow Europe to arrive at NATO discussions with clarity about what it can do, what it will do, and what it expects from the Alliance. This would not be about excluding the United States but about Europe organising itself.
The NPG does not weaken NATO cohesion. Instead, it strengthens it by preventing fragmentation and ad-hoc solutions. An EPG would do the same. Instead of informal caucusing, opaque dealmaking, and last-minute alignment, Europe would have a recognised forum to do the hard work of continent-wide coordination under the NATO umbrella.
This could make transatlantic discussions more predictable, serious, and strategically coherent.
Critics may worry this could create a “two-tier NATO.” But a two-tier arrangement already exists between those who shape Alliance strategy and those who react to it. An EPG could narrow that gap.
Such a group would require a disciplined interface with EU defence and industrial structures. It would articulate Europe’s collective military priorities inside NATO and feed them into EU military advice and capability planning, where member states validate them and EU institutions translate them into capabilities, procurement, and industrial scaling. This wouldn’t be without friction between European members. But the debate would at least start from a more coherent position.
Where speed or political convergence is lacking, coalitions of the willing could provide an additional implementation pathway, with the EPG acting as the catalyst that allows willing states to find each other and align around solving clear capability gaps. Over time it can also turn voluntary cooperation into durable programs under the NATO banner – as already seen with initiatives such as the Strategic Airlift Capability (C-17) programme.
Importantly, an EPG would not be Europe moving away from the Alliance – rather, it would be stepping up within it. Washington has long asked Europeans to take more responsibility for their own defence, but responsibility requires agency. So, the US should welcome this concept.
An EPG which is consultative, NATO-embedded, closely tied to the EU, and focused on whole-of-Europe coherence could be a modest initial reform that might open the door to further convergence in the longer term. If done carefully and deliberately, it could lay the first stone for a European pillar of NATO.
This Op-Ed was originally published by Euractiv. Read the original publication here.
Chris Kremidas-Courtney is a Senior Visiting Fellow at the European Policy Centre.
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