First allow me to thank Nikos for welcoming us here and for insisting on gathering us today. It is a good idea.

In only a few years, the Mediterranean has dramatically changed, becoming a more unstable and less secure region as the number of challenges that we have to face together increased:

•    Protracted conflicts in the South and Eastern shores have damaged governance and also durably affected social tissues,

•     Economic and financial crisis has diminished the capacity of the countries of the northern shores of the Mediterranean to act as the healthy economic partner the south now needs,

•    Terrorists and violent extremist groups exploit deep-rooted grievances in order to gain support and claim territory and resources and control populations,

•     Human disasters across our sea question everyday our collective means and instruments.

 

The risks of protraction of these crises are evident:

•    Risk that the Mediterranean becomes an unstable area in the medium-term, with pockets of stability struggling to reduce pockets of chaos,

•    Risk that the area becomes a lake of refugees with all the durable and deep consequences it has for societies across the North-South divide,

•    Risk that from a political cooperation perspective we remain entangled in a crisis-management mode,

•    And finally from an economic point of view, the risk that we grow less attractive and less prosperous.

 

The chaotic situations in Syria and Iraq, but also in Libya, have provided for an unacceptable long time the hard proof of these very real and acute challenges.

The recent EU authorizing of its naval mission in the Mediterranean, Sophia, to start enforcing the UN arms embargo aimed at halting weapon supplies to extremists in Libya, is a welcomed step in our efforts to address these challenges in a comprehensive manner.

The EU initiative, complemented by the decision to begin training Libyan coast guard and navy, represents a new, proactive and necessary approach to better facing the challenges in the Mediterranean.

NATO, through its maritime mission in the Aegean, is already cooperating with Sophia, EU’s FRONTEX, Greece and Turkey in the efforts to tackle the migrant and refugee crisis.

Albania has offered to participate in the coming months in this operation.

Also, NATO’s new maritime security operation in the Mediterranean, Sea Guardian, launched in Warsaw and that includes counterterrorism and intelligence-sharing, is an encouraging example of coordinated effort.

Cooperation among us is very important so that we do not have to deal with the consequences of unilateral moves, not only because of the very negative impact and risks that this would entail for each of our countries, but also because this does not solve the problems of the refugee crisis.

We need to work together in developing a dialogue by building an alliance of civilisation and avoiding mistrust and prejudice among us, while the cornerstone of our actions should be the protection of human rights and promotion of the rule of law.

The Western Balkans is located on the route whereby the fallout of the chaos in the South reaches North Western Europe. Yet, both the refugee crisis and the joint fight against terrorism demonstrate the interdependence of the northern shores  of the Mediterranean and the southern ones.

Also, we have witnessed over the past few years new forms of cooperation which have created space for joint success in key sectors, such as energy. I am confident that Energy cooperation is exactly what can help us translate interdependence into stability and prosperity.

I certainly hope that in the future, this much needed forum will help us develop the instruments and means that we lack right now to make of our interdependence once more the source of the economic revival of the Mediterranean.

Thank you !