On Wednesday 13 July the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, underlined the cooperation between his organisation and the EU.
“We are doing more than we have ever done in the past”, he stressed at a hearing in the European Parliament, explaining that it was also important to coordinate the actions of both organisations (see EUROPE 12975/32). He said that the EU and NATO were working together on cyber security, Kosovo and in the Aegean. Moreover, “the crisis in Ukraine has demonstrated the quality of our cooperation”, he said.
The day before, the Secretary General of the European External Action Service, Stefano Sannino, had told MEPs that the two organisations’ threat assessments were “perfectly” aligned. This shows the need for very close cooperation, he explained, brushing aside concerns about overlap between the two organisations. “There is a need for complementarity between what the EU and NATO are doing”, the Secretary General added.
According to Mr Sannino, now that the EU’s ‘Strategic Compass’ and NATO’s Strategic Concept have been adopted, the two organisations are ready to move forward with the adoption of their joint declaration, which the Czech Republic would like to see adopted during its EU Presidency.
“I think this declaration should be a relatively straightforward document, recalling the geopolitical context we are facing, the areas and cooperation we have developed and planned and the new areas we would like to work together in”, he summarised.
Mr Sannino specified that the new areas were hybrid threats, space, disruptive technologies, and the impact of the environment and climate change on security. “It would be a very strong signal of our transatlantic unity”, he said. The EEAS representative also highlighted military mobility “which should be at the very centre of our joint work”. He added that there were also consultations on the practical elements of cooperation: resilience, strategic communication and countering disinformation and foreign interference, consistency of the results of defence planning processes and capacity-development efforts.
The EEAS Secretary General also stressed the importance of political dialogue between the two organisations and between their leaders. He recalled the first transatlantic leaders’ dinner which was held at the NATO summit in Madrid, which was “inclusive, with all Allies and all EU Member States”. “It sent a very strong message about transatlantic unity and the fact that we are together in the face of this same challenge (Russia’s attitude, editor’s note) and that this is not the time to compete, but rather to cooperate”, explained Mr Sannino. He hoped that this experience would be repeated. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)