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  1. NATO’s military adaptation must be met with faster, stronger and more consistent efforts to strengthen resilience, especially civil support to military operations. This is especially true as the Alliance becomes increasingly interconnected, geographically and across domains, and where challenges to the resilience of an Ally may have cascading effects throughout SACEUR’s Area of Responsibility (AOR). The fulfilment of national civilian planning against operational requirements, including the Host Nation Support Minimum Operational Requirements (MORs), reinforces credible deterrence and defence by ensuring that military forces are adequately supported with civilian resources and infrastructure. Further, strengthening resilience through a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach demonstrates the Alliance’s resolve and blunts our adversaries’ strategic intimidation.
  2. The implementation of the Baseline Requirements requires Allies to:
    1. Establish an effective governance framework for national resilience that clearly identifies roles and responsibilities across whole-of-government and whole-of-society stakeholders, while coordinating with the military in peace, crisis and conflict;
    2. Account for reliable and sustained resource planning. At their 2025 Summit in The Hague, Allied Heads of State and Government agreed to account for up to 1.5% of GDP for defence- and security-related spending, including in the areas of resilience and civil preparedness 1;
    3. Deliver civil effects to support the execution of NATO’s military plans, including by providing Host Nation Support (HNS) in a contested environment.
  3. Coherence between national and NATO planning for deterrence and defence will ensure that civil and military plans and capabilities reinforce each other. It will also ensure that Allies can de-conflict needs for civil, military and commercial resources so that both the requirements to support national armed forces and those to deliver HNS to reinforcing forces can be balanced and fulfilled, while mitigating the impact on the population, including the provision of essential services. This should also facilitate and encourage respective civil and commercial stakeholders to consider including contingencies for crisis and conflict situations into their respective business continuity planning.
  4. Allies have demonstrated that the best and most effective response to all threats and hazards is through cross-sectoral, whole-of-government coordination, supported by whole-of-society considerations. This reflects not only the many interdependencies across the baseline areas, but also the coordinated effects needed to respond to broad and far-reaching challenges to resilience. National and NATO-organised exercises, including NATO’s Crisis Management Exercises (CMX), provide opportunities for relevant authorities to test resilience at the national and Alliance levels.
  5. Allies have made substantial progress to adapt to a dynamic and evolving strategic environment. However, the continuous degradation of the security environment demands a more thorough, risk-informed approach to ensuring resilience. These Baseline Requirements help Allies to assess their ability to prepare for, resist, respond to, and quickly recover from strategic shocks and disruptions.
  6. Additional cross-cutting risks, challenges and threats that have been considered for the 2026 revision of the Baseline Requirements include:
    1. The potential for armed/physical attack on citizens and/or critical infrastructure, including acts of sabotage;
    2. More frequent and damaging cyberattacks, which can cripple the delivery of essential services to the population and civil support to military operations and create unique economic and political challenges for the Alliance and individual Allies;
    3. The challenges associated with emerging and disruptive technologies (EDTs) impacting resilience and civil preparedness as well as military effectiveness;
    4. Harmful economic activities and strategic dependencies, which may hamper Allies’ ability to promptly react to strategic shocks and disruptions and have a potential significant impact on industrial capacity and supply chains, during crisis and conflict;
    5. Extreme weather, natural disasters, space weather and changing environmental conditions, which inflict increasing strain on resilience across the Euro-Atlantic area, potentially compounding the effects of hostile activity;
    6. The need for stronger and more reliable restoration and repair capabilities to improve Allies’ abilities to quickly recover from strategic shocks;
    7. The inherent vulnerabilities caused by the increased dependence of essential functions on space-based assets and related technology, including societal functions but also military capabilities.

Baseline Requirement 1: Assured Continuity of Government and Critical Government Services

Objective 1: A formalised, tested and exercised plan or system for the continuity of government, including:

  1. The ability to exercise sovereign authority and sustain representation and decision-making at NATO under all conditions.
  2. A line of succession of the leadership and clarity of the decision-making process and chain of command in the national government in the case of a potentially destabilising event throughout peace, crisis and conflict.
  3. Identification and prioritisation of National Essential Functions, critical governmental agencies, critical services including supporting obligations under the Concept for the Deterrence and Defence of the Euro-Atlantic Area (DDA) and its Family of Plans (FoP) (e.g., Host Nation Support (HNS) and Enablement functions, such as the provision and delivery of food, water, fuel, electricity, heat, transport, financial services, specialised goods, medical/pharmaceutical/personal protection products and equipment).

Objective 2: A comprehensive system of national capabilities for civil protection/civil defence that is resilience-based and preparedness driven.

Objective 3: A hardened and resilient, both environmentally and physically protected, crisis management centre and alternative arrangements to ensure continuity of government operations and other critical services, during crises and conflict with redundant capacities.

Baseline Requirement 2: Resilient Energy Supply

Objective 1: Continued access to reliable energy supplies, particularly in crisis or conflict, taking into account the potential impact of industrial capacity2, interdependencies, cascading effects and potential secondary impacts. This should be underpinned by mitigation plans for the full spectrum of risks and threats and identified vulnerabilities, the ability to scale up energy production and distribution, and the ability to ensure priority access in line with the requirements for Host Nation Support.

Objective 2: Resilient capabilities to mitigate threats and respond to energy supply disruption, and verified and exercised repair and restoration plans, developed and implemented with infrastructure operators.

Objective 3: Tools to identify and prioritise critical supply chains and interdependencies (including energy-related industrial base, cross-border interconnections, cross-sectoral and within sectors), including legislation or robust contractual agreements with private sector owner/operators and means to mitigate potential risks associated with potential harmful economic activities.

Objective 4: Implementation of information sharing and awareness raising protocols and procedures resulting in the provision of timely, actionable information across all relevant national and international stakeholders, including infrastructure operators, to strengthen national and societal resilience and support collective defence.

Objective 5: Identification and assessment of risks and opportunities offered by existing and evolving technologies and the evolution in concepts to ensure the continued resilience of energy systems.

Baseline requirement 3: Ability to Manage Controlled and Uncontrolled Movement of People

Objective 1:  National arrangements and contingency plans to address and mitigate the impact of controlled and uncontrolled movement of people from within and outside the national territory, including a mass influx of people that exceeds 2% of the nation’s total population, based on national risk assessments, taking into account basic human needs.

Objective 2: National arrangements for controlled evacuation of the civil population from crisis and conflict areas. Ensure, if necessary, the protection of the population through restriction of movements, in the event of life-threatening dangers, taking into account basic human needs.

Objective 3: Preplanning and exercising handling of the simultaneous movement of people and deploying military forces within the same geographic area via limited transportation routes. This includes a de-conflicting mechanism to prioritise the movement and support of civilians and the military.

Baseline Requirement 4: Resilient Food and Water Resources

Objective 1: Ensure situational awareness, early warning and protection for food and water resources, and critical infrastructure, including against all threats and hazards. 

Objective 2: Comprehensive contingency plans – regularly exercised nationally and/or with other Allies – to secure food and water supply, particularly during crisis and conflict, to ensure provision of food and water to civilian population and in support to military operations in line with Host Nation Support (HNS) requirements.

Objective 3: Continuity of essential functions in food and water sectors under sustained crises, addressing, workforce availability and capability, critical inputs, supply and cross-sector dependencies, and risks associated with potential harmful economic activities.

Baseline Requirement 5: Resilience To Deal With Mass Casualties And Disruptive Health Crises

Objective 1: Strengthen resilience and readiness through a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach to preparedness and planning to address mass casualties and disruptive health crises, ensuring the provision of essential healthcare services to the population and in support of the national and NATO military forces.

Objective 2: Enhance mechanisms and procedures to share health and medical information and situational awareness between civil and military medical authorities and other key stakeholders as well as relevant international organisations.

Objective 3: Create a comprehensive and secure overview/database/inventory of the emergency civil and military healthcare capabilities and capacities.

Objective 4: Develop comprehensive and integrated contingency/emergency plan/planning addressing/responding to mass casualties in an emergency and times of crises and conflict.

Objective 5: Design robust and diversified national stockpiling and security of supply arrangements for medical supplies, equipment, pharmaceuticals and/or active pharmaceutical ingredients, as well as blood and blood products.

Objective 6: Conduct comprehensive civil-military training and exercises to test plans, procedures and cooperation among all relevant stakeholders.

Baseline Requirement 6: Resilient Civil Communications Systems

Objective 1: Continued availability of reliable, resilient and secure civil communications services. This should include continuity and contingency planning for crisis and conflict situations, and be underpinned by national legislation and crisis management arrangements in cooperation with private sector and military stakeholders.

Objective 2: Comprehensive and regular national risk assessments of the full range of risks and vulnerabilities, considering also risks in a situation of crisis and conflict. The risk assessments should include physical and digital risks, as well as the cascading effects of disruptions on civil support to the military, continuity of government, and other sectors including emergency services, energy, transport and health care.

Objective 3: Establish and maintain an overview of supply chains, including sources of critical components, dependencies, foreign ownership, and control of vendors and service providers that are critical to the availability of communications networks, systems and services. Consider the availability of critical supply chains and managed services in a situation of crisis or conflict.

Objective 4: Ensure priority access to civil communications networks and services to support both societal resilience and military enablement, and including for the national and Allied military and Host Nation Support (HNS) requirements.

Objective 5: Assured capability and mechanisms to support communication between the authorities and civil population, including during crisis and conflict. This should include national capabilities of alert and warning systems to the population in case of an emergency situation.

Baseline Requirement 7: Resilient Civil Transportation Systems

Objective 1: Have legislation, policies and arrangements in place, necessary for continuity of essential civil transport services and civil support to military, that:

  1. identify, test, prioritise, de-conflict, ensure access to, protect, and restore civil/commercial transport assets, infrastructure, services, transport routes, and personnel in a timely manner, to support national and Alliance priorities throughout peace, crisis and conflict;
  2. allow border crossing within required timelines to support the freedom of movement of NATO forces, through a single national point of contact supported by a national cross-government network of relevant ministries;
  3. establish cross-government coordination protocols clarifying roles and responsibilities of all relevant authorities and stakeholders.

Objective 2: Ensure that civil transport infrastructure and services remain resilient so that they are agile and able to withstand and recover, whilst minimising disruption, from:

  1. the impact of a range of potential risks, including both chronic (e.g. changing environmental conditions, information threats, increasing reliance on digital services) and acute risks (e.g. human-induced and/or natural disasters, hybrid threats, cyberattacks, pandemics);
  2. the consequences of harmful economic activities and strategic dependencies; as well as
  3. potential vulnerabilities associated with existing and evolving technologies (e.g., GNSS, 5G and next generation communication networks), and potential vulnerabilities associated with prolonged crises, including concurrent and complex crises, as well as cascading effects. 

Objective 3: Keep transport information (IT) and operational technology (OT) systems, as well as transport-related emerging and disruptive technologies and communications, resilient, so that they are agile and able to perform essential functions.  This would be supported by:

  1. a detailed overview of prioritised critical transport-related digital (i.e. IT and OT) infrastructure;
  2. back-up and alternative systems as well as redundancies;
  3. a mechanism for notifying NATO of significant disruptions on transport systems that have a potential impact on the Reinforcement and Sustainment Network (RSN).

Objective 4: Ensure resilience of civil transportation systems to support cross-sectoral resilience through:

  1. Identifying interdependencies with other baseline areas, given the critical enabling role of transport for all sectors;
  2. Establishing networks with lead authorities for other resilience areas to capture specific transportation needs of respective sectors (e.g. medical, agriculture, etc.);
  3. Developing arrangements to meet transportation capacity required for continuity of essential services and civil support to military across all baseline areas.

Footnotes:

1. Expenditures for resilience, civil defence, and civil preparedness are included, as long as the expenditure is based on national resilience planning or required to enable the execution of a NATO defence plan or national plans.

2. Consistent with the principles agreed in the “Guidance for Enhancing Public-Private Cooperation for Resilience”.

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