Media huddle

Once again it was a great pleasure to meet with the Foreign Relations Committee of the European parliament and to meet with the Chairman Elmar Brok and I think we had a very good discussion for actually 1,5 hours. We addressed many different issues and topics.

My main message was about the importance of developing and strengthening the cooperation between the European Union and NATO and we are making progress in many different areas, like hybrid, like cyber and common challenges we face, the EU and NATO.

But now most recently we are also making progress in developing the cooperation between the EU and NATO when it comes to tackling the migrant and the refugee crisis. As you all know NATO’s Ministers of Defence decided two weeks ago that NATO shall assist, help with tackling the migrant and refugee crisis. We have already deployed ships, maritime assets to the Aegean sea. They do monitoring, and we are now, as we discussed, working on the practical details, legal issues, operational issues on how to implement this decision.

And this is about how we can help Turkey, how we can help Greece, but also how we can assist Frontex and EU.

This is important for Europe, this is important to step up the efforts to fight the smugglers, the illegal networks and of course we are ready to provide help to the European Union when it’s asked for and that’s the reason why I also welcome the decision and the work which is now going on related to how it’s going to be implemented.