Good morning everybody,
I am very happy to welcome you here in the External Action Service for our dialogue on defence. There is so much more we can do together. We are very like-minded partners. We have the Security and Defence Partnership, and now it is really about what we can do more.
There are very concrete things on hybrid, and also support to Ukraine, what we are doing. I want to also commend the UK for your support to Ukraine and also the recent decisions that you have had. This is extremely important and we can discuss today what more can we do, and of course we are also discussing what we can do for the preparation of the EU-UK Summit that is coming up in two weeks. It is important to have concrete deliverables also from that Summit, but over to you.
Q&A
Q. HR/VP, should Britain be considered in ‘Made in Europe’ when it comes to defence products?
The UK and the EU are of course very like-minded partners and therefore also our Member States are really benefiting from the cooperation that they have with the UK, and also UK defence industry. There was no result when it comes to the SAFE agreement also participation of the UK. We have other ways to cooperate and of course I think looking at the bigger picture it is really important that the UK is part of the bigger EU defence alliances that we have here.
Q. [inaudible] High Representative, if that were to happen, would you expect Britain to adopt the Euro and agree to the Schengen Agreement?
It is up to any agreement and first of all what the UK people are wishing to see, but at the same time, I must also say that there is a lot of traumatised people from Brexit here in the European Union. So these negotiations will be difficult, but we are not there yet. What I think is important is that both the UK as well as Europe, we want to have a deeper relationship with the UK because you are very close. We are stronger when we work together. So definitely, let us move step by step.
Q. What are your key deliverables on defence that you want for the upcoming UK-EU reset Summit? Is there any appetite to reopen SAFE negotiations, look at joint stockpiling or procurement?
The SAFE, as it is, is already working. So there is discussion whether there will be SAFE two, and then what are the conditions, but we are not there yet for the Summit. What I would like to see is that we are moving forward on the Framework Participation Agreement, which is also the participation of the UK in our civilian as well as military missions where we can work together, but again these negotiations are still ongoing, so there is two weeks to go.
Q. High Representative, can I ask you first of all, how concerned are you about these reports in Ukraine that the Emergency Alert app has been hit by a cyber-attack and people in the streets of Kyiv saying that there is a reported radiation leak.
Of course cyber-attacks are part of this bigger warfare that Russia is conducting against Ukraine, and of course we are concerned about all these attacks because it has an effect on civilians. What the Russians are trying to do is really to hurt civilians as much as possible so that the alerts would not work, so that they would have as many people killed as possible. July, August and September have been the deadliest months for Ukrainians during this whole war, and this is because Russia has not been able to move on the battlefield. So they are causing as much damage to the civilians to really pressure them into submission. So yes, we are concerned about all these kind of cyber-attacks, sabotage acts, but of course the attacks that they have every day now.
Link to the video: https://audiovisual.ec.europa.eu/media/video/I-296955