Remarks

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte
Prime Minister, it's a great honour to meet you and also to be back in your beautiful country. Indeed, this is my first time as NATO Secretary.

Japan, indeed, is a long standing and highly valued partner, as you said, for over 40 years now, and I have every intention to keep strengthening our already significant partnership and relationship. Because in a more dangerous world and we are so much stronger when we work together.

Yesterday, I got to see some of Japan's great assets. I visited your Yokosuka naval base and saw the professionalism and dedication displayed by the Japanese Maritime Self Defence Forces, I also toured a Mitsubishi Electric facility and met with key industry leaders today in Japanese dual-use start-ups, I was impressed by the work done in this strategic domain.

I said in the parliament this afternoon, Japan, for us, is one of our best friends in the world. We have taken our partnership to the next level, including, indeed, on cyber defence cooperation, on the other issues you mentioned, and also on maritime security.

Going forward, we want to do more even, because of the security situation of the world we need to do more, in particular on standardization, on defence industrial corporations. There are many opportunities, and I really look forward to discuss them with you tonight, and indeed, I had some very good meetings with the Foreign Minister in Brussels, and with the Defence Minister yesterday and today.