Remarks by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the European Parliament Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Sub-Committee on Security and Defence Committee
04 May. 2017
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JENS STOLTENBERG (NATO Secretary General): Thank you so much and thank you David for inviting me once again to address these committees.
I have done it before and actually last time I did it was just before the Warsaw Summit of NATO in July last year and now I’m coming back and I’m addressing you just before – actually only three weeks before NATO leaders, Heads of State and government will meet again in Brussels this time on the 25th of May.
And I’m pleased to be able to tell you that since I met you last time we have made a lot of progress when it comes to cooperation NATO and the European Union. First of all, I signed a declaration together with President Juncker and President Tusk in Warsaw in July and later on together with the High Representative Federica Mogherini we agreed in December on forty-two concrete measures on how to strengthen NATO E.U. cooperation. And we are strengthening the NATO E.U. cooperation based on the fact that of course not all E.U. members are member of NATO and not all NATO members are member of the European Union. So, we fully respect the autonomy of the decision-making processes in the European Union and in NATO.
We respect the differences between the two organizations but we at the same time understand that we have a lot to gain from working closely together, because even though not all members are the same we know that more than ninety percent of the people living in an E.U. country they live in a NATO country and we share the same security environments, we share the same instability to the South with ISIL, with turmoil, with violence in the wider Middle East region, in North Africa and we also share the same challenges coming from a more assertive Russia. So, therefore there are strong reasons for strengthening the E.U. NATO cooperation and that’s exactly what we have done with the joint declaration and with the forty-two measures we now are implementing. And those forty-two measures are about how we can work more closely on cyber defense, on responding to hybrid threats, on operations, on exercises and in many other ways.
And the good thing is that we are really making progress and High Representative Mogherini will report to the E.U. Council in June. I will report to the NATO Council in June on the progress we are making and then after summer we will look into what more we can do to further build and strengthen our cooperation. The good thing is that we are not only implementing concrete measures but we have also been able to change the culture, so now actually cooperation is the norm – is the normal thing in the relationship between NATO and E.U. Before it was more the exception.
So, I’m really pleased to start by telling you that we are making progress, we have lifted NATO E.U. cooperation to a new level. That was also my message to Ministers of Defense … the European … or the E.U. Ministers of Defense in Malta when I met them there last week and I told them that we have very visible concrete examples of how we are working together in the Mediterranean just off the coast of Malta. The NATO maritime security operation Sea Guardian provides direct support to the E.U. Operation Sophia dealing with the challenges we see in the Central Mediterranean. Last week we had four NATO ships, three NATO maritime patrol aircrafts and some other assets helping and supporting the E.U. Operation Sophia. We also work together in the Aegean Sea with NATO naval presence in the Aegean Sea helping to implement NATO … no sorry the E.U. Turkey Agreement stemming the flow of illegal migrants.
So, this is not only in words but also in deeds that we have been able to really strengthen NATO E.U. cooperation and I look forward to take that agenda forward. Then as I said we will have a NATO meeting, meeting of Heads of State and government on the 25th of May here in Brussels. That will be a short meeting but it will be a very important meeting because it will be the first meeting where the new U.S. President comes to Europe, comes to NATO and it will be also the first meeting of, with the new French President. So, I’m absolutely certain that the NATO meeting on the 25th of May will be a very strong … will send a very strong message about Trans-Atlantic unity, Trans-Atlantic resolve just by convening the meeting and having all the twenty-eight leaders together. Actually, it will be twenty-nine because we will also have Montenegro present because Montenegro is now in the process of becoming the twenty ninth member of the Alliance.
All Parliaments will have ratified that within a few weeks. The two main issues that will be addressed at the NATO meeting are both very relevant for E.U. and for of course all E.U. members regardless of whether they are member of NATO or not. Because we are going to address the Trans-Atlantic bond, burden sharing and the fight against terrorism I will just briefly go through those two main issues; I will not go through the whole NATO agenda. I will leave many issues to you to have time to ask me questions afterwards. So, I will not cover all issues but I will briefly then share with you some thoughts on these two main issues for the meeting in May. First on the fight against terrorism, terrorism is something which is a real threat. We have seen terrorist attacks in our capitals across Europe, in United States, in E.U. countries, in NATO countries and we see that these are attacks on our open free democratic societies and we have to fight back in many different ways and we need a wide range of measures in the fight against terrorism. It’s about political measures, diplomatic measures, economic measures, domestic politics, international politics and many of the measures are civilian and have nothing to do with NATO and military capabilities.
But some of the measures we need in the fight against terrorism are military and we need also military element in the fight against terrorism. As we have seen in Afghanistan for many years but also as we now see in the fight against Daesh or ISIL in countries like Iraq and Syria. And NATO has played and is still playing a key role in that part of the fight against terrorism which is about the military means. We have played a key role in Afghanistan for many, many years. Our military presence in Afghanistan is our biggest mission ever and all NATO allies have participated, but also many non-NATO allies have participated; because they are partners they have participated in the Resolute Support Mission and before that the ISAF mission in Afghanistan. And many of the countries that are not member of NATO but member of E.U. have been in Afghanistan. So, this has been a joint struggle and we still have to be in Afghanistan.
We have ended our combat operations in Afghanistan but we continue to train, assist and advise the Afghan forces to enable them to stabilize their own country, enable them to fight terrorism themselves. And I think that if there was one lesson we have learned both from Afghanistan but also in a different way – but it is the same lesson we have learned from Bosnia-Herzegovina and from Kosovo – is that in the long run it’s much better if we are able to train local forces to stabilize their own country, to fight terrorism themselves instead of NATO deploying big number of combat troops in big combat operations. So, building local capacity, training local forces is the key when it comes to NATO’s contribution to fighting terrorism. We have to make decisions on our presence in Afghanistan in the coming years and we have to make decisions on how to step up our efforts to fight terrorism including when it comes to providing support for the Counter-ISIL Coalition, the U.S. led Counter-ISIL Coalition in Syria and Iraq.
NATO provides some support already. We train Iraqi officers but I think that NATO has untapped potential for doing much more, not to engage in combat operations but to engage in something which is actually even more demanding and will take more time and that is to enable the Iraqis, other countries in the region to stabilize their own country and to fight terrorism themselves.
So, we are working with many countries in the region to help them fight terrorism and stabilize the region. The other main issue and then this is on the agenda for the meeting on the 25th of May and it’s also an area where there is a potential for more cooperation NATO E.U. You have many tools, NATO has many tools, none of us has all the tools in the tool kit but together we really are a formidable force when NATO and the European Union works together.
The other main issue at the Summit, no we don’t call it a Summit, the meeting of Heads of State and government in May is the Trans-Atlantic bond and burden sharing. And as you know NATO made a decision in Wales in September 2014 to stop the cuts in defense spending, to gradually increase and then to move towards spending two percent of GDP on defense within a decade. And the good news is that we have really turned a corner because after many, many years of decline, reduction in defense spending across Europe and Canada in 2015, the first year after we made the pledge for the first time we saw a small increase – at least we didn’t see a decrease – we saw a small increase in defense spending total Europe and Canada.
In 2016 the second year after we made the pledge we saw actually a significant increase in defense spending across Europe and Canada, 3.8 percent in real terms, close to or around $10 billion U.S. dollars and that is a significant increase. So, we are moving in the right direction, we still have a long way to go. The picture is still very mixed, some allies are very close to 2 percent, some allies have already reached 2 percent while other allies still have a very long way to go, but we have started to move in the right direction and I welcome that very much. Burden sharing for us is not only about spending, burden sharing is also about capabilities. We need more modern capabilities to be able to provide strong and credible deterrence.
The reason to be strong is not to provoke a conflict but to prevent a conflict and we need also contributions to NATO missions and operations, some of them working closely with the European Union. All of this will be addressed at the meeting of Heads of State and government in May. Part of burden sharing in, or the Trans-Atlantic burden sharing is also NATO E.U. cooperation and therefore I would like to once again underline that stronger European defense is something I welcome. Stronger European defense is good for the European Union, it’s good for Europe and it’s good for NATO.
As long as we make sure or the European Union makes sure that what the E.U. does is complementary to NATO, not competing with NATO, and that has been clearly committed from many, many European leaders that strengthening European defense is about more defense spending, it’s about more exercises, it’s about developing new capabilities, it’s about more cooperation, but it’s not about establishing a European army, it’s not about establishing new command structures which are duplicating
NATO command structures and actually therefore I welcome what I see because I see a real effort by NATO and the European Union to work together, not compete and it would have been meaningless to have a competition between NATO and the European Union because as I said more than ninety percent of the people living in the European Union live in a NATO country so that would actually mean that we have to compete with ourselves and that’s not a very good thing to do.
So, my message to you is that NATO is adapting, NATO is responding to a more demanding, challenging, dangerous security environment. We do that by implementing the biggest adaptation of the Alliance we have seen for many, many years but we do that not least by stepping up our cooperation with the European Union because we know that together we are stronger, together we are better able to respond to a more challenging international environment which we share regardless of whether we are the European Union or NATO.
Thank you so much.
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Zdroj a ilustračné foto: http://nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_143400.htm?selectedLocale=en
