On NATO-EU cooperation

The cooperation between NATO and the European Union should be strong even after December 2016. “The process that was launched on the basis of the Joint NATO-EU Declaration in Warsaw and its intention, which we reconfirmed at the Informal Meeting of the EU Defence Ministers in Bratislava, should not be halted. On the contrary. I believe the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, too, will discuss the continuity of cooperation from their level of perspective in December,” said Minister of Defence Peter Gajdoš after the meeting in Brussels. Also in attendance at the meeting were NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and the European Union's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission, Federica Mogherini.

In accordance with the mandate for strengthening the bilateral cooperation between NATO and the EU, which arises for the Ministers of Defence from the Warsaw Declaration, the countries have been tasked to work out proposals by December 2016. Towards this end, the head of the SVK MOD pointed to the need to keep the cooperative momentum going in the upcoming period as well. “During the meeting of the EU Defence Ministers in Bratislava we devoted our time, besides the European Union's Global Strategy for Foreign and Security Policy, to discussing NATO-EU cooperation in the field of security and defence. Under the umbrella of our EU Presidency, we held a seminar on NATO-EU cooperation, which was dedicated to measures against hybrid threats,” he explained. From Slovakia's perspective, the deployment of Slovak Military Police personnel on Operation SOFIA is a concrete example of NATO-EU cooperation.

Jens Stoltenberg and Federica Mogherini reiterated the continuity of cooperation between NATO and the EU, with emphasis on excluding the duplication in building the capacities which may be used for operations by both NATO and the EU.