Joint press statements

Thank you, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

And thank you so much for your warm welcome and also for your nice words about my father. And I will tell him that you mentioned his efforts to help people of Hungary back in 1956.

Hungary is a valued Ally and Hungary contributed to our shared security in many different ways. And I’m grateful for your contribution to our Alliance, to our security. You are leading the Baltic Air Policing, you are part of the Air Policing we have in the air space over Slovenia. And we are also now establishing new NATO Force Integration Units, small headquarters in Hungary. And in addition to this, Hungary is also contributing to our operations in Kosovo, in Afghanistan and you are the host nation for our Strategic Airlift Capability. So Hungary is really contributing to the Alliance, to NATO, in many different ways and we are grateful for that.

Of course we would like this to develop and to strengthen and therefore I also welcome the announcement by your government to stop the cuts in defence spending and start to increase and to invest more in our defence. That is important for Hungary and it’s important for the whole Alliance.

We meet in challenging times for Europe. A few days ago we had horrific attacks, terrorist attacks in Paris, innocent people were killed. But the terrorist attacks in Paris were not only attacks on innocent people but they were also attacks on our core values: the open, free, democratic societies. And the aim of the terrorist attacks is to scare us, to attack our open societies but we will stand up for our values and we will answer with even stronger defence of our open democratic societies.

All NATO Allies are part of the coalition fighting ISIL. In addition, several NATO Allies have offered support to France, we share intelligence, we share information and moreover we are also focused on how we can build capacity locally in the region to enable governments to defend themselves and to fight terrorism, extremism by using their own forces supported by NATO and NATO Allies. And that’s the reason why NATO is heavily engaged in train, assist and advice mission in Afghanistan. Training, assisting and advising the Afghan national forces, that’s the reason why we do defence capacity building in Iraq, our work with the government of Jordan and Tunisia to strengthen their capabilities and their capacity to stabilize their own countries, to fight extremism in their own countries and in their own region because if they are more stable, we are more secure. And we are, by building local capacity, also addressing the root causes of the migrant crisis in Europe.

The migrant crisis is a human tragedy and we all have to do what we can to address the root causes both by building capacity in the region but also to support efforts to find political solutions to the different conflicts and I welcome the renewed efforts to try to find a political solution, a peaceful solution to the crisis in Syria.

We do not only face challenges stemming from the South but we also face challenges stemming from the East. We see a more assertive Russia, a Russia being responsible for aggressive actions in Ukraine, annexing Crimea, destabilizing eastern Ukraine.

We have seen some progress in implementing the Minsk agreements. We saw in September and October that the ceasefire was mainly holding and we also saw some withdrawal of heavy weapons. Recently we have seen an increase in the violation of the ceasefire and I’m deeply concerned about the possibility of the resumption of the violence and the fighting and I urge all parties to fully implement the Minsk agreements, to respect the ceasefire, and to withdraw heavy weapons from the contact line.

NATO is responding to a changed and changing security environment. We have doubled the size of our response force, we have established a new High Readiness Joint Task Force, where the lead elements are ready to deploy within hours. And we have established small headquarters in 8 eastern and central European Allied countries and we are also going to do that in Hungary. And we have increased our military presence in the eastern part of the Alliance.

This is the strongest reinforcement of collective defence since the end of the Cold War. Hungary is being part of that. You’re contributing and I thank you for your contribution, both in Air Policing to our Readiness Joint Task Force, and to the training and exercises of our forces. So Hungary is a valued Ally and I appreciate to be back and to meet with you.

We have met in different capacities before but this is the first time that I visit Hungary and Budapest as Secretary General of NATO, so thank you very much.