Warsaw, 2 June 2016

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Thank you, Witold, for the very warm hospitality, also for the flexibility in light of the transportation delays we had this morning. I also thank you for congratulating me on the National Day we have today in my home country. Indeed I think it is the first time I miss the National Day in Italy, obviously my heart is there, but it was also very important to me to come and visit for the second time Warsaw, especially one month ahead of the NATO Summit, and have these exchanges with you, with the Defence Minister, with the Prime Minister, with the President. I count on my country’s forgiveness on being here.

We meet often and we will be together in Paris tomorrow, every month you participate at the Foreign Affairs Council and our consultations, our common work on the European foreign and security policy is constant. But again, it is very important for me to be here and work together, especially on the preparation of the NATO Summit. 

I know that Jens Stoltenberg was here very recently. And you are perfectly right when you say that the cooperation between the European Union and NATO, being two different organisations, with different memberships and different "raison d'être", as we say in French, are cooperating more and more together on many different fields, all beneficial for both our memberships. 

I believe that the Warsaw Summit will be a perfect occasion to highlight all the areas where the NATO - EU cooperation adds value both to the work of NATO and to the work of the European Union and obviously of our Member States. So we discussed in detail about this, also about the upcoming Global Strategy that has benefited so far from strong and important inputs from Poland, and that we discussed very recently together in Brussels; I count to present it before the NATO Summit at the June European Council. 

And this is also because of the inputs that Poland actively contributed with to our work over the course of the last year. And we count very much, and I personally count very much on Poland's contribution also for the follow up, in the implementation of the strategy, because a strategy is not only a piece of paper, it is a sense of direction and then you start working on it after it’s adopted. 

You mentioned the issues we discussed the most, in particular I would like to mention the knowledge, the experience, the understanding that Poland brings to the European table when it comes to our Eastern Partners, especially in the moment when Poland is preparing to take the presidency of the Visegrad 4. 

It will be a very good, important contribution to the common work of the European Union, the work that the Visegrad 4 under your leadership will do in the coming year. And obviously in particular the work we do with Ukraine and on Ukraine, but also with the other partners we have: with Moldova, Georgia, but also with Belarus, and I know that you paid an important visit there recently, and also with Armenia and Azerbaijan where our aim is to help the parties to find a solution to the issue of Nagorno Karabakh. 

We also discussed the Middle East Peace Process, Libya and Syria, issues where in the Foreign Affairs Council we constantly work together. And we discussed many other issues that for reasons of time and to simplify a bit our communication I will not go into. 

I will just finish by saying that indeed Poland is a very strong actor inside the European Union, and I had the occasion of saying this also with the President; I know how deeply and strongly the Polish people feel about that, about being part of this Union, this family, and it I think self-evident also in the foreign and security field that the European Union needs Poland, very much, as much as Poland needs Europe. Being, working together in the family, when it comes to foreign and security policy is something that brings a lot to all of Europe. Thank you very much. 

Video: http://ec.europa.eu/avservices/video/player.cfm?ref=I122213