Kensington Treaty Enters Into Force as Merz and Burnham Exchange Ratifications — Mutual Assistance 'Including by Military Means'

The treaty runs to 27 pages with a 17-point action plan, dpa reported. Its defence chapter commits forces to the execution of NATO's defence plans, names the northern and eastern flanks, and provides for a dialogue "including on nuclear issues"; Britain also applies provisionally the core of the 2021 French–German–Spanish agreement on defence export controls. The 2024 Trinity House defence agreement appears only in the preamble. There was no joint press conference; Burnham used his statement to offer Germany a route into GCAP.

The British release says the partnership will share information and coordinate action "to monitor, deter and disrupt threats", names Russia, and points to London's fast-tracked powers to designate state-backed organisations. The joint statement speaks of resilience, critical infrastructure and the ability to "monitor, mitigate and counter Hybrid threats", with no country named. Britain's National Security (State Threats) Act received royal assent on 8 July; the first designations, on 17 July, covered Iran's Revolutionary Guard, the Islamic Movement of Companions of the Right and Russia's GRU Volunteer Corps.

The partnership pairs a British designation list with German law that reaches the same actors by conduct, not by list. Once a body is designated in Britain, supporting it is an offence carrying up to 14 years; Germany's equivalent tools, such as Section 99 of the criminal code on intelligence work for a foreign power, need proof of the act. Disruption in common therefore runs through shared attribution or EU listings rather than one legal instrument. Signal No. 163 read the designations alongside the treaty; what would show the partnership working is the first joint British–German attribution of a sabotage or cyber operation, or an EU hybrid-threats listing of a body London has designated.