Speech

MIRCEA GEOANĂ [NATO Deputy Secretary General]: Thank you, Vivian and it’s a pleasure to join you virtually, hopefully, next year, we’ll do it also more in-person again.

And thank you for having me at the Meridian Summit. Also, my good friend Bogdan Banu, whom I know from my younger years in Washington - I served as Romania’s ambassador in Washington some years ago - he was very instrumental in bringing us together. So thank you so much for having me.

And also thanks for bringing such a diverse group of people current and also, and even more importantly, future leaders from the public and the private sector, and also encouraging all of us to try to address global crisis. So this kind of partnership and collaboration is essential also here at NATO, from Brussels NATO Headquarters, where I’m speaking right now.

Because, indeed, our world is more unpredictable, more competitive, more dangerous. And we know that the best way to prevent or respond or anticipate security crisis is by trying to have a more holistic view of the environment surrounding us and try to see where we can find solutions to tackle those challenges.

So that’s why also in NATO, we are an Alliance of 30 nations, one billion people, we consider ourselves and not only as the most successful alliance in history, also, because we’ve been able over the last 70-something years not only to stick together, one another, across the Atlantic, but also to always work closely with people, with nations, organisations, with citizens, with private business, always around our fundamental values of democracy, freedom and rule of law.

In the Washington Treaty, which is our founding document, this is where the fundamental peace and the enduring source of success for NATO lies and also I know that this will be the case for many decades to come.

Speaking of partnerships, just, I think two hours ago, we finished a very dense and very successful NATO Defence Ministerial Meeting. Secretary Austin was here, his colleagues from all over Europe. And the last panel and the last working session of this very important meeting was with partners, speaking of partners: with Finland and Sweden - people do not know how close we are with these two very important and high-end European partners - and also with our friends from the European Union.

Because in a way, speaking of the challenges we face, we . . . we, no one, no country, no continent and no organisation can cope with the complexity of these global evolutions alone. So that’s why we are looking at potential areas of cooperation between NATO and EU, because also EU is headquartered downtown in Brussels on the other side of the city. We are now working to work even closer together on resilience, where NATO has significant experience and expertise, EU is also useful in their toolbox on cyber, on fighting disinformation, on new technologies and, yes indeed, on the security impact of climate change. And this is something that is very much at the heart of the Meridian Summit.

So as a way of introduction, I’m just saying that we are open to engage with civil society, with private sector, with our natural partners, because keeping our democracies vibrant and strong in a complicated world is an endeavour that we should face together.