Joint press point

Prime Minister Plenković,

Andrej,

It’s really a great pleasure and honour to be here in Zagreb, and especially on this day, your Independene Day, so Happy Independence Day.

We are grateful for Croatia’s important role in NATO. You contribute to our shared security to our collective defence with, as you mentioned, your presence in our Enhanced Forward Presence in the Baltic region, in Lithuania, and in Poland. We also commend you for sending troops to Kosovo, to the NATO mission KFOR and also to the Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan, helping us to prevent Afghanistan from once again becoming a safe haven for international terrorists.

I’m also looking forward to welcoming troops from Croatia in our big exercise Trident Juncture later on this month.

And I also appreciate the fact that you are now investing more in defence. After years of cutting defence spending in most NATO Allied countries, we as an Alliance have now turned a corner. All Allies have started to increase, all Allies are moving in the right direction but we still have a long way to go and I welcome the fact that you have enshrined in a law that you will meet the 2% target by 2024, the target of spending 2% of GDP on defence.

For NATO of course it is also important the situation in this region. I just came from Belgrade where I participated in a big NATO exercise, it was not a military exercise, but a civil preparedness exercise.

And the reason why this exercise is important is that it shows that NATO Allies and partners in this region are able to work together, in addressing natural disasters as flooding, wild fires and earthquakes and we have seen that these kinds of natural disasters have been a problem in this region and also the rest of Europe. But the exercise was also important because it shows the strength of our partnerships in this region and I think to build partnerships with countries in the region which are not members of NATO is important because that’s a way to try to reduce tensions and avoid the conflicts that we saw in the 1990s. And as you mentioned, Prime Minister, we discussed the situation in the region including the situation in Skopje after the referendum, Kosovo, where NATO is present, and we also addressed the challenges in Bosnia-Herzegovina especially after the elections.

So once again thank you for welcoming me, thank you.

Question: Good afternoon, Secretary General.  This morning in Belgrade, you emphasised that we all should be ready for the unpredictable.  Concerning the security threats that you see in this region of South East Europe, of Western Balkans, can you agree with Mr Junker, who recently said that there's a possibility of a new war in the Balkans if Euro-Atlantic community doesn’t… how to say… understand things in this region more seriously?  And concerning the unprecedented attack of Russia last week that we all witnessed, as NATO member countries and your strong statement from the Ministerial meeting, how do you see the role of Croatia in that regard in building up the cyber resilience, concerning the events that we witnessed in the region of Western Balkans?  Thank you.

Jens Stoltenberg [NATO Secretary General]: I said today, earlier today, that we should always be very careful about predicting about the future because we have been not very good at predicting the future before.  But we need to be prepared for the unforeseen and to be able to manage uncertainty also in the security domain, and that’s the reason why NATO has significantly increased the preparedness of our forces.  That’s the reason why we have strengthened our intelligence cooperation and established a new intelligence division within NATO.  And that’s the reason why we are also investing more in defence and also improving, for instance, our cyber capabilities.  And Croatia is part of this big adaptation of NATO, the biggest adaptation of the Alliance since the end of the Cold War.  Also as part of a response to a more assertive Russia.  And we have seen, for instance, how Russia is using what we call hybrid tactics, including cyber, to interfere in democratic processes in different countries, including in NATO Allied countries, and also how Russia is using cyber to attack international institutions.

Question: [Spoken in Croatian]

Jens Stoltenberg [NATO Secretary General]: And the example we saw last week, with the attempts to hack into the networks of the OPCW, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, is serious also because it's part of a pattern, where we have seen similar actions from Russia before.

Question: [Spoken in Croatian]

Jens Stoltenberg [NATO Secretary General]: And therefore, NATO stands in full solidarity with the Netherlands and UK in their decisions, and also the decision that the Netherlands took to expel four operatives of the Russian military intelligence, GRU.

Question [Bloomberg]: Secretary General, you said you discussed also Bosnia, you discussed Macedonia.  It looks like the situation is sliding down a little bit, Macedonia perhaps opting, with the low participation at the referendum, not to exit the chaotic situation in which it is for decades now.  What is your general view of the region, including the possible story about the land swap between Serbia and Kosovo?  As you know, this would be the departure from the Badinter Agreement and basically affirmation of what Slobodan Milošević once wanted, and that is the ethnic borders and not administrative borders.  Thank you.

Jens Stoltenberg [NATO Secretary General]: I think we have to recognise that south east of Europe, or this region, has made a lot of progress over the last decades.  And Croatia, being now an independent country, a member of EU, a member of NATO, with a strong voice in the international community, is a great example of the progress.  So, yes there are many problems, yes there are many challenges, there are uncertainties.  But if you look back and compare to the 1990s, there has been a lot of progress and Croatia is a great example of the progress.  I say this because, when we speak about this region, we focus a lot on the problems and on the challenges and on the potential conflicts.  But we also need to recognise the progress which has been made.  The progress is uneven, meaning that it's a very different situation in different parts of this region.

In Skopje, they had a referendum in the country.  It's not for NATO to decide the next steps, but for the democratically-elected institutions in Skopje.

And then in Kosovo, we have seen some incidents, we have seen some increased tensions.  For me, that just highlights the importance of NATO presence, that KFOR stays there to protect all communities, and that we continue to support the Pristina-Belgrade dialogue, and this was an issue I discussed also in Belgrade earlier today.  When it comes to Bosnia and Herzegovina, I think that first of all, the fact that elections were held is important.  Then I think we now have to wait and see the final assessment from the election observers and I think also that, for NATO, the important issue is the discussion related to how to move forward on the partnership with Bosnia and Herzegovina.  We have some presence in Sarajevo, we do some capacity building, we help to implement reforms, and we have also addressed the issue of whether we are going to active their membership action plan.  But I think today is not the day for me to conclude on these issues.  But we need to assess and discuss and then to make decisions on the way forward.  Thank you so much.