Joint press point

President Nishani, very much welcome to NATO headquarters. It’s great to have you here and great to see you again. We last met in Tirana not so many months ago. And it’s really an opportunity I appreciate very much to be able to further strengthen our relationship and expand our cooperation.

And I am very grateful for Albania’s strong commitment to our Alliance and your contributions to NATO missions and operations. I welcome your continued contributions to our missions in Afghanistan and in Kosovo.

You also provide strong support for our partners, including contributions to our Trust Funds for Ukraine, helping with cyber defence and military career transition. And Albania plays an important role in the fight again ISIL, contributing equipment and Special Forces trainers to Iraq.

All of this is just some few examples of how you are playing a key role in helping NATO deliver on its different commitments.

Albania also helps build stability closer to home, by promoting cooperation throughout the Western Balkans. You are a strong advocate for NATO’s Open Door policy, and for integrating your neighbours into the Euro-Atlantic family. Next month, we will take an important step, with the signature of the Accession Protocol for Montenegro. Then Montenegro has made yet another important step towards full membership. Once all Allies have ratified the Protocol, Montenegro can become the 29^th member of the Alliance.

Albania’s political and practical efforts to help to keep NATO strong, as we face the most challenging security environment in a generation, is something we appreciate very much.

Our Alliance is responding to the new security environment. Today we discussed how far we have come and what we still have to do.  At the Warsaw Summit in July, we will enhance our forward presence in the eastern part of our Alliance. We will make progress on key capabilities, like NATO’s Ballistic Missile Defence, and our surveillance drone programme. And we will also step up our support for partners in the east and in the south.

To the east, we help Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova strengthen their defences, and run transparent, effective security ministries. To the south, we are training Iraqi officers, and supporting Jordan and Tunisia.

But NATO can do more, because in fighting terrorist groups like ISIL, building our partners’ capacity is one of the best weapons we have. Twenty-first century challenges require twenty-first century defence.

So I really appreciate that Albania has decided to increase defence spending this year. And I encourage you to continue to do so and to continue to increase your investments in defence. This will help keep the people of Albania safe and help keep NATO strong.

So President Nishani, thank you again for coming here and thank you excellent discussions, and for being here at NATO headquarters.

QUESTION (ABC Albania): Secretary General, Albania is a not a big country, but Albania’s human contribution has been highly appreciated in important NATO missions, like in Afghanistan and in Iraq. The courage to face high-risks, and an openness to locals. But right now, NATO and the EU are facing new challenges. How do you see the role of Albania in counter-terrorism? And what are your expectations from that?

I know NATO is preparing for the transformation of its operation in the Mediterranean Sea? If you could develop a little bit. What kind of transformation can NATO do in order to counter the migration crisis?

SECRETARY GENERAL: The president and I spent quite a lot of time during our meeting discussing how we can enhance and reinforce our joint efforts to fight terrorism. We addressed the challenges related to foreign fighters, especially their return. Albania has already done a lot to address those risks and challenges and I welcome Albania doing so. We underlined the importance of improving the ways we share the intelligence. It is important that we enhance both the collection of intelligence and sharing amongst NATO Allies. This is something we have been working on for quite some time. We have seen results, but we have to stay vigilant. We need to continue to adapt the way we work related to intelligence.

Then, I think that the main message is that we need to stay united as an Alliance when we address the root causes and to work together on how we can stabilize our neighbourhood, countries which are suffering from violence and turmoil: Iraq Syria, North Africa.

NATO cannot do this alone. We are working with other nations, EU and others. We are constantly addressing how we can project our stability beyond our borders. Not going into big military combat operations but by building local capacity, as we do now in Iraq, where we train the local Iraqi officers, helping them to stabilize their own country.

We also work with Jordan, Tunisia and other countries. That is in a way an important part of our fight against terrorism. For example, Afghanistan, has been our biggest military operation ever, and the reason why we are there, also with forces from Kosovo, is to fight terrorism, to prevent that Afghanistan once again becomes a safe haven for international terrorism. It was a direct response to the terrorist attacks on 9/11.

When it comes to our maritime presence in the Mediterranean and Aegean. First of all, I think from what we have seen in the Aegean is that NATO contributes in a very useful way to the efforts of the European Union, of Greece and Turkey to cope with the migrant and refugee crisis. We conduct surveillance, monitoring. We gather information and then we share this information in real time with the Greek and Turkish coastguards and also with the EU’s border agency Frontex. And we see how they take action, upon the information they have received from NATO ships in the Aegean. And add to that, just the presence of NATO ships creates an additional platform for enhanced cooperation between the EU and NATO and also between Greece, Turkey and the EU. So for instance I visited the German flagship in the Aegean and on that flagship there was a naval officer from Turkey and a naval officer from Greece working together and this is important in itself.

We are now in the process of transforming our naval operation Active Endeavour, which was actually established after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. We are now in the process of transforming that into a broader maritime security operation. The details are not yet decided, but, in principle, such a broader maritime security operation can do many different tasks, like situational awareness, uphold freedom of navigation, conduct interdiction tasks, support maritime counter-terrorism and contribute to capacity-building. So we are now in the process of doing exactly that, transforming Active Endeavour into a broader security operation and we are in dialogue with the EU, with Italy and other EU members on how NATO can support, assist, help the efforts of the EU. We already do that in the Aegean Sea and then we are considering what more we can do in other parts of the Mediterranean.

That was a very short answer, to a very precise question.

QUESTION (Albanian Public TV): Secretary General, do you foresee a greater contribution of Albania in NATO. If so, how can it be outlined?

SECRETARY GENERAL: Yes, I expect Albania to make good on the promise we all made at our last Summit with heads of state and government in Wales in 2014, to increase defence spending. I welcome the decision of the Albanian government to increase defence spending in 2016. But still there is a way to go to reach the guideline of spending 2 percent of GDP on defence. Of course, by increasing defence spending in Albania, you are making the defence, the armed forces of Albania, stronger. But by doing so, you are also making NATO stronger. So my main message is that we all have to invest more in our collective security in times where we see that we live in a more dangerous world. And Albania has some key capabilities, you have some experience, you have some capacities which are of great importance in the Alliance. But I would like to see more Albania in NATO. Therefore, I expect and am looking forward to Albania investing more in defence in the coming years.