Check against delivery! 

Good morning to everybody, 

Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, 

Thank you to all of you for joining this first-ever Schuman Forum, our new Security and Defence [Forum].  

Thank you to the European Parliament, dear David [McAllister, Chair of the AFET Committee] for hosting us. 

I see in this room many Ministers from the 27 European Union Member States, and from more than 50 partners around the world. 

Many of your countries contribute in one way or another to our 21 civilian and military [EU] missions and operations deployed around the world. And with most of your countries, the European Union holds regular security and defence dialogues.  

But the reasons to organise this Forum – and thanks once again for being here with us - go deeper than that. There are at least three issues, or three questions, that I would like to raise with you in this opening session. 

First, why do we need partners? 

Second, what can the European Union offer to our partners? 

And third, what can we do together? 

So, [the] first question: why do we need partners? The answer looks obvious. 

We are more than one year [since the start of] Russia’s brutal war of aggression against Ukraine which has been a blatant violation of the rules-based international order.  

And vote after vote at the United Nations, we have seen states rallying behind a call for a ‘just peace’. Not just for peace, [but] for a just peace, and for Russia to withdraw from Ukraine and respect its territorial integrity and sovereignty.  

Our collective support to Ukraine has been impressive and must continue so that Ukraine and the international law prevail.  

But the core rationale for why we need partners goes beyond Ukraine.  

Yesterday, some of our Ministers told us: “You make a lot of phone calls about Ukraine.” Yes – but not only about Ukraine. What matters, what worries us goes much further than Ukraine. 

We know that no one, no country, acting alone, can address challenges [such] as the weakening of multilateralism, the return of power politics across the world, the renewed assertiveness of authoritarian regimes, and the mix of conventional and hybrid threats that we are facing. 

The consequences of climate change and the increased competition over natural resources that will go and go – from the Arctic to the Sahel region. 

On all those fronts, we need partners. And to partner is deeply rooted in the DNA of the European Union. Because we, ourselves, the European Union is based on cooperation among partners. Every European Union policy – including defence – is the result of cooperation. 

We changed the logic of confrontation by the logic of cooperation. So it is logical that we see partnerships as an essential part of our security and defence agenda. 

Just a few weeks – even days - after the start of Russia’s aggression against of Ukraine, European leaders adopted what we called the Strategic Compass which is an ambitious plan to strengthen our security and defence policy on the horizon of the next 5 to 10 years.  

The fact that this Compass includes a full chapter devoted to partnerships is a clear message: we regard our security and defence agenda on the one hand, and our cooperation with partners on the other hand, as mutually reinforcing.  

Well, to answer the first question was quite easy. It was quite evident. 

The second question is a little bit more difficult: how do we translate this principle into practice? What can the European Union offer? What and how? 

Let me remind you, let me think about the past because it is maybe something that not many people know. The story of the European Union security and defence started about 20 years ago. It is not something that we invented after the war in Ukraine started. 20 years ago, we deployed our first military operations in the Western Balkans and then in Africa. 

And after, it has [been] followed [by] two decades of engagement deploying over 40 missions across all continents, up to the most recent missions for Ukraine [EUMAM Ukraine], certainly, but also for Armenia [EU Mission in Armenia] and Niger [EUMPM Niger]. 

But it is fair to say that our response to the war in Ukraine in particular, has changed the way we - in Europe - regard our own security and defence agenda.  

At the same time, it has changed the way you – our partners - regard our agenda, and the opportunities that it may offer.

I can say that our resolve and our actions have surprised many. We did not let Russia divide us. On the contrary, we have been – and we continue being – united, more united than ever. 

We have adopted 10 sanctions packages to exert a maximum collective pressure on Russia. 

We have cut our dependence on Russian oil and gas in a matter of months. Frankly, no one could imagine that we would be able to do it, but we did it. 

We have mobilised €3.6 billion so far under the European Peace Facility (EPF) to support Ukraine with military equipment. We have broken a taboo by financing the supply of weapons to a country at war, using not the resources of the European Union budget but our community resources. 

We have a deployed a training mission [EU Military Assistance Mission Ukraine] to train up to 30,000 Ukrainian soldiers before the end of 2023. 

Now we are working to jointly procure equipment and artillery ammunition to replenish our stocks and to deliver more support to Ukraine to defend itself, and ramping [up] the [production] capacities of our defence industry which is key. 

I think that putting all these things together represents an unprecedented effort for the European Union that was not foreseen. 

And I know from my visits around the world, and with my discussions with many of you, that this new European Union security and defence agenda has raised interest and opened avenues for new forms of cooperation. 

Many partners – from Africa to the Middle East and our Eastern neighbourhood – are increasingly asking for support in areas such as geospatial intelligence through our [EU] Satellite Centre, cyber resilience, strategic communication but also lethal equipment. 

Navies in the Americas, in the Middle East and Asia are increasingly interested to conduct joint activities with our naval operations. Let me mention Operation [EUNAVFOR] ATALANTA that has a very good track on this – with naval exercises conducted with Japan, with India and Oman to name a few. 

So, this brings me to the third question, the really important question towards the future: what can we do together?  That is why we are here. 

Decades of security and defence partnerships have shown us that we have to be humble, flexible and pragmatic.  

We need to listen to each other and to do ‘lessons learned’. Yesterday, one Minister was saying to us: “it is not a matter of not sharing the same values. Yes, we share the same values, but maybe we do not share the same priorities, and you do not take our priorities enough into [consideration]”. 

Well, maybe. So, let’s be humble, flexible and pragmatic and take into consideration the priorities of all our partners, and go for tailored approaches that reflect the realities of the country or the region we are dealing with. 

Last year, we adopted the Strategic Compass, [and as] I said, there are a concrete number of new objectives. Allow me to mention some of them, on which I would like to hear your views today. 

The first one [is that] we have to enhance the effectiveness of our civilian and military missions and operations in supporting our partners. We have to increase the effectiveness of what we do. 

We have drawn lessons from the challenges we face in the Central African Republic and in Mali. In both countries, our missions were not sufficiently backed by an effort to equip our partners. 

And the Wagner group, which is a ruthless proxy of the Russian regime, has used this to its advantage. With the devastating results that we know for the local people and their security.  

So, we need to adjust our way of working. 

The Strategic Compass foresees the adaptation of our model of military missions. It should allow us to meet our partners’ expectations with more targeted training and equipment - more targeted and more partnerships. For example, the new training mission in Niger is going to be an [EU] Military Partnership Mission. It was launched last month with a focus on maintenance and logistics, with a light but scalable footprint. 

We also want to apply more systematically the ‘train and equip model’ - not only ‘train’ - to our civilian missions. This approach has already been providing good results in Niger and Somalia.  

We are now preparing a new mission in the Republic of Moldova to strengthen the country’s capacity to counter hybrid threats.  

Second, we use a broad understanding of security and want to put more emphasis on prevention.  

Let me cite the case of the Gulf of Guinea. We do not have to run behind the crisis, but to prevent the crisis from happening.  

The Gulf of Guinea is a case in point. They need an urgent support to tackle the spill over of the terrorist threat from the Sahel region.  

Instead of large military training missions, we need small, agile teams of experts and trainers – from the military but also from the police – that could be deployed quickly to address specific requests for targeted trainings, advice, intelligence or equipment. Our planners are currently visiting the countries in the region to put this new approach in motion. 

Prevention is also increasingly guiding our civilian missions. Earlier this year, we established a civilian monitoring mission in Armenia [EU Mission in Armenia], in the areas of the border with Azerbaijan. The aim is to contribute to build confidence between the two parties through a permanent and visible European Union presence on the ground.  

Third, we want to maximise the potential of the European Peace Facility. Nobody was expecting that, but history has made the European Peace Facility a real game changer for our missions and operations, and our relations with our partners. 

We used the European Peace Facility so much during its first year of existence – over €4.5 billion allocated [so far] -, that the Council already had to replenish it last December. And I am sure they will have to do it again. Without a doubt, it has been a crucial instrument to respond to Russia’s war in Ukraine.  

But, once again, it is not just about Ukraine. The EPF is a global instrument. It has enabled us to support African peace operations – from Somalia to Mozambique, from the Lake Chad to the Sahel region – as well as individual partners from Georgia and Moldova to Niger, from Bosnia and Herzegovina to Lebanon and Jordan.  

We will continue doing that. We know that our partners are increasingly interested in lethal support. Yes, what we have done for Ukraine can and will be done for others. The first assistance measure to provide lethal equipment for African partners - Niger and Somalia - will be adopted soon. 

With that, the European Peace Facility can act as a structured and transparent trust fund, for the international support for Ukraine, for example. This is how a partner like Norway understands it. Thank you to Norway for channeling your support through the European Peace Facility and for contributing with personnel to the European Union Military Assistance Mission for Ukraine that - as I said - will train 30,000 soldiers by the end of the year. 

Fourth, as we strengthen our own resilience and we are ready to help our partners to build their own. 

We underlined that cyber, hybrid warfare, foreign interference and manipulation of information are critical dimensions of our partnerships. 

We need and we want to strengthen our cyber dialogues with key partners such as the United States first, but also Japan and South Korea, to compare intelligence and coordinate sanctions against perpetrators of cyber-attacks. This will be more and more necessary because these cyber-attacks will happen more and more often. 

For example, Russia’s cyber-attack on the satellite communications provider Viasat, just before the start of the invasion of Ukraine, had far-reaching consequences. We were quick to coordinate our response with the United States and other key partners within the G7.   

Soon, we will also be able to dispatch hybrid rapid response teams to address requests from our partners to identify vulnerabilities, investigate and provide concrete support.  

Fifth – and I am finishing: we want to train and exercise with our partners, starting this year with the maritime domain. 

We have the right tools to do so. Operation [EUNAVFOR] ATALANTA has already developed from an anti-piracy off the coasts of Somalia into a broader maritime security operation, covering a larger spectrum of tasks in a much larger theatre. First, it was against piracy in the coast of Somalia, now it is a full security provider for the maritime roads along the coast of Africa. 

The last few months ATALANTA seized large volumes of drugs, depriving al-Shabaab from major revenues. 

We are developing a second Coordinated Maritime Presence in the North Western Indian Ocean, building on the first experience in the Gulf of Guinea. We hope that it will enable cooperation through port calls and common exercises with countries in both regions. 

We organise live maritime exercises with partners. At the end of March, two ATALANTA frigates will undertake exercises with a US destroyer. We want to do the same with Japan and Canada soon. 

We also remain active in the Indo-Pacific on maritime and other security issues with ASEAN. We have set up a concrete project on ‘Enhancing security cooperation in and with Asia’.  

Sixth, we want to see our defence initiatives paving the way for enhanced cooperation with partners. 

We have opened our PESCO projects on military mobility to Canada, to Norway, to the United States - and more recently to the United Kingdom. 

If you look at the European Defence Fund, a number of participants in our industrial programmes are controlled by non-EU entities. As long as they fulfil our criteria, our partners are invited to join our defence initiatives.  

This is a perfect illustration of our commitment to work with NATO Allies, in the spirit of our joint EU-NATO declarations. 

But it is not just NATO. A new number of partners – from Norway, to Ukraine, to Serbia – can enjoy a cooperation with the European Defence Agency (EDA).  

As you can see from all these examples, we are committed to shaping mutually beneficial partnerships [both] at the bilateral and regional level.  

Yes, the war in Ukraine has tested the solidity of the relationship between the European Union and NATO. And the result is clear: our cooperation is stronger than ever.  

Our political unity is rock-solid. Our efforts at all levels are closely coordinated and mutually reinforcing. And in the field, from Bosnia and Herzegovina to Kosovo and Iraq, we are working hand-in-hand.  

This cooperation is equally valued with the United Nations in all theatres where our missions are deployed – especially in Africa. The United Nations can count on us and our continued support – from political and operational coordination to information sharing and satellite imagery. All kinds of coordination is open to the United Nations. 

We also want to do that also with the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the African Union and the ASEAN. 

Dear colleagues, 

It has been a broad travel through what we want to do with the European defence projects. Our security and defence agenda is broad and we are developing our capacities fast.  

Because the world’s needs and the security challenges we are facing are also growing - they are enormous.  

So, we need to work more together. And be smart and creative. Together, we are stronger.  

This all begins by thinking clearly and listening to each other carefully.  

This is our purpose. That is why I invite you to do today: stating your views, your needs, your expectations, your concerns. 

This is the purpose of this Schuman Forum.  

I want to thank you again for being here. And let me also – again - thank the European Parliament. Once upon a time, I was President of this House, and I could never imagine that one day, I was going to be here, pushing for something such important as the European defence capabilities in a challenging world. 

Thank you for providing us with this great venue for our debates. Thank you to all of you for being here. I am sure there are a lot of things that we can do together. 

Thank you. 

Link to the video (starting from 2:45): https://audiovisual.ec.europa.eu/en/video/I-238823