Press statement

Thank you, Mr. President. It’s a great honour to be received by you here in Athens.

I would also like to thank you for your strong commitment to NATO and to the Alliance.  And also the commitment of Greece over many decades to NATO. And a strong Greece is contributing to a strong NATO so therefore I welcome that Greece is investing so much in our collective defence.

Together we are as an Alliance now responding and adapting to a new and more challenging security environment. We are adapting to a more assertive Russia, responsible for aggressive actions in Ukraine. But we are also adapting to the turmoil, the violence we see to the south with ISIL, terrorism and all the problems we see in North Africa, the wider Middle East region, Syria and Iraq.

And of course the migrant and refugee crisis is linked to the violence and the fighting we see in Syria and Iraq. And Greece is on the frontline because you are so much affected by the migrant and refugee crisis and you are generously hosting tens of thousands of migrants and refugees in your country.

And after the request from Greece, from Turkey and from Germany, NATO decided in February to assist Greece, Turkey and the EU with coping with the migrant and refugee crisis. And we have deployed ships. Three of them are Greek ships which are now active in the Aegean Sea, helping the Greek coastguard, the Turkish coastguard but also the EU border agency Frontex to cut the lines of the criminal networks and human smugglers.

So I think that we see how NATO provides practical assistance to the efforts of Greece and other countries to cope with the migrant and refugee crisis but also how NATO provides a platform for enhanced cooperation between Turkey and Greece but also between NATO and the EU and I welcome that very much.

I very much look forward to the NATO Summit in Warsaw, there we are going to address the big challenges we’d with and I’m looking forward to meet all the 28 Heads of State and Government and to make important decisions on how NATO shall continue to adapt to a more challenging security environment.

Global warming, climate change is not NATO’s main responsibility but I promise not to forget about the importance of fighting global warming. Also because there is a link between global warming and security because global warming is causing conflict, is forcing people to flee and it’s making it difficult to create sustainable development and therefore instability is caused by global warming and therefore that is a link between global warming and security.

So once again thank you so much for receiving me and thank you for having me and my delegation here in your office in Athens.