Opening remarks at the pre-ministerial briefing

Good morning. Thank you very much for coming. Sorry for the slight delay. As per usual, I will be speaking on the record. My colleagues here will be “Senior NATO Officials”, so I will introduce them afterwards.

First let me go through the logistics and the programme of the Ministerial. The Secretary General will give a doorstep statement on Wednesday at 12h30, and of course, he will be taking a couple of questions. Then the first working session will start at 14h00 and will focus on defence capabilities. Ministers will have a discussion and give direction on addressing existing capability gaps.

Second working session will be focussing on defence capacity building, cyber defence and maritime security as well as the Connected Forces Initiative.  And this session I suspect will conclude around 18h30 after which you can expect the press conference by the Secretary General which will take place next door.

And then a Working Dinner will be taking place in the evening and I expect that the Ministers will be discussing Afghanistan and Ukraine over dinner.

We are not planning any media briefing after that dinner.

The following day on Thursday, we will have the meeting of defence ministers with ISAF contributing partners and the Afghan Defence Minister as well. This will be starting at 09h30 and I expect it will conclude around 11h30 at which point you will have the final press conference.

As usual, we will be live-streaming the press conferences, and we will be sending as many updates as we possibly can via Twitter and all my colleagues will be available to answer questions from the Press Office next door.

And now we can get on to the more substantial briefings, and of course after that we will all take questions.