Check against delivery! 

Dear colleagues, Excellencies, 

This is the 24th EU-ASEAN Ministerial Meeting, we have a lot of history behind us. And I am very happy to welcome you at this meeting that will be co-chaired by Secretary [of Foreign Affairs of Philippines, Enrique] Manalo and myself.

It is a year after the EU-ASEAN Commemorative Summit, and today, this meeting marks a significant milestone in our relations - Europe and Southeast Asia. Everybody knows – everybody knows is a song, no? - how important, how crucial your region is for our prosperity and security. 

Last year's Summit already underscored our shared commitment to foster our ties.

Crucial commitments were made by our Leaders, including the pledge by the European Union to mobilise €10 billion for connectivity projects in ASEAN through our Global Gateway initiative. 

Today, we are translating commitments into actions by reviewing the implementation of these Leaders’ decisions and agreeing on next steps.

We can say that both, we are global leaders, regional leaders – European Union and ASEAN. We are leaders in regional integration, we are leaders in championing multilateralism, we are leaders in defending international law.

As the European Union, we are certainly looking forward to deepening our partnership even further. Let us hope that our common declaration that, I hope we can agree by the end of our meeting, will represent this common commitment, taking into account the different approaches and several questions that have to be also taken into consideration also in order to understand each other.

Now, I pass the floor to Secretary Manalo, who will continue chairing the meeting.

Thank you. 

• Link to the video: https://audiovisual.ec.europa.eu/en/video/I-251628