Brussels, 5 April 2023
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Today, we are welcoming Finland as a new member of NATO. With that, 22 out of 27 members of the European Union are at the same time NATO members. We hope that Sweden will come soon. And this makes the European Union closer to NATO and both together, stronger.
And together, we have been working on supporting Ukraine to defend [itself] from the Russian aggression. We will discuss it today. I will explain what the European Union is doing to support Ukraine. We have done it since the beginning and we will continue doing it as long as it takes.
Also, we have our friends from the Indo-Pacific area. Together with the NATO [Foreign] Ministers we will have a meeting today to study, to face the common security challenges that the Transatlantic region on one side and the Indo-Pacific on the other side are facing.
And there comes the role of China. The European Union is committed to continue a constructive engagement with China in order to solve the global challenges. We need China to solve the global challenges, and we want to develop a constructive engagement with China.
But we expect China to behave as a positive, constructive global player, in particular, in front of the Russian aggression against Ukraine, which is a violation of the United Nations Charter.
Today, with the Indo-Pacific, we will discuss the situation in this area and in May, we will have a Ministerial meeting [Indo-Pacific Ministerial Forum] – the European Union and Indo-Pacific partners – and we will continue discussing these challenges and our common interests in this region.
Thank you.
Link to the video: https://audiovisual.ec.europa.eu/en/video/I-239574
Source – EEAS