Remarks

Welcome to your first foreign ministers meeting. But before I continue, let me express my condolences about the four US soldiers who died during [an] exercise in Lithuania. Our thoughts are with their families, their friends, their colleagues – soldiers – and we have the deepest respect for their service. I also want to highlight the work being done by the US, Lithuania, but also Poland and Estonia, to work around the clock, basically, to do everything to make sure that they would be recovered. But again, we are very sad about their death. 

Marco, I want to commend you for your tireless diplomacy over the last couple of months. You have travelled the whole world. I also want to thank you for what you did before as a senator supporting NATO. And we will have a lot to discuss over the coming two days. Of course Ukraine. As I said before, President Trump, the team – you broke the deadlock. You started a process of negotiations with our full support to bring the Ukraine war to a lasting, to a durable peace. And in the meantime, the Europeans are stepping up, providing a lot of military support into Ukraine. And we have seen the latest numbers coming in, that overall NATO Allies have provided in the first three months, over $20 billion in support to Ukraine to make sure they can stay in the fight as long as it continues. 

We will also discuss the other threats over the next two days. Of course Russia, which is our long term threat, but also the increasing problems we have with China. Of course, North Korea, Iran and all of these four are getting more and more connected, and these two theatres getting more and more connected and working intertwined. 

We know that the United States is a staunch Ally in NATO. I had a very good meeting with the President, with President Trump, but that commitment comes with an expectation, and the expectation is that European Allies and Canada need to spend more. Since Trump 45 the aggregate extra spending from Canada and Europe has been 700 billion up to now, but when you look at the hundreds of billions of euros/dollars now rolling in, in the last couple of months, this is probably the biggest surge in defence spending we have seen in Canada and Europe since the Cold War, since the Berlin Wall came down. So that is good news, but still, we need to do more. 
And then, of course, we will meet with the partners from Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, also to discuss another important issue, which is defence industrial production, and how we can do more with them to work together. So lots of ground to cover, but again, a warm welcome, please.