The Minister of National Defence Mr. Panos Panagiotopoulos participated in the joint meeting of EU Ministers of Defence and Foreign Affairs at Brussels, under the chairmanship of Baroness Catherine Ashton.
During the meeting, the following issues –among others– were discussed:
- Issues of common security and defence policy of EU member-states.
- The adoption of a code of conduct on Pooling and Sharing that will aim at the cooperation between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Defence of EU member-states for the consolidation of defence cooperation in Europe.
After the completion of the meeting, Mr. Panagiotopoulos made the following statement:
“Once more, during this meeting of EU Ministers of Defence and Foreign Affairs, the issues proposed and discussed were numerous and very interesting.
During the works, we had the chance to promote the need for procedures to proceed promptly, so that the European Union would finally have a complete institutional context for implementing defence and security policy.
We asked for a full preparation, so that the Summit of 2013 will succeed its goals since, as it has already been decided and announced, it will be a Summit that will handle security and defence policy issues in the European Union.
We carefully heard the European Commissioner responsible for Internal Market and Services Mr. Michel Barnier, who came so as to brief the Ministers of Defence Council on matters of defence industry in the European Union and we asked for a unified policy for an integrated defence and military industry in united Europe, in order to eliminate the current fragmentation in weapon systems produced in EU member-states.
Apart from this issue, we made an essential intervention for EU operations in the Horn of Africa, Somalia and neighbouring countries to continue, so as to eliminate piracy and protect international merchant marine of Greek interests”.
