President Iohannis: Europe must take greater responsibility for its own defense

Europe must assume greater responsibility for its own defense in order to strengthen our strategic resilience, President Klaus Iohannis said on Monday. The head of state is taking part in informal meeting of EU leaders. The leaders discuss military capabilities and the European defense industry.In this sense, Iohannis evoked the need for adequate financing seen not only as the allocation of more money, but also as the efficient use of the tools we already have.Regarding defense, the President of Romania emphasized the need for complementarity between the European Union and NATO.   President Klaus Iohannis also said that the EU believes in increasing defence spending and in this respect "Romania has set a good example".The head of state is attending the informal European Council meeting on defence."I think such an informal meeting is also good, because we need to reach some common points and we need to have a common approach. Romania's position has been very clear for a long time. I have expressed it, I have said it publicly both at home and in Brussels. We believe that defence spending must be increased and I think Romania has set a good example. We have reached 2.5% of GDP. On the other hand, it is clear that we need to work much better together. The defence industries in the EU must work together much better," the president said.Klaus Iohannis called for "standardization, so that we do not have dozens of types of weapons".He also advocated additional common funding."How this can be achieved, of course, remains open. Some propose that certain expenses be included in the European funds, in the MFF, others propose that everyone should pay for their own defence, but here, obviously, we need to find out how to finance, how to collaborate, and how to standardize, if we want to have a much more solid European defence," said Klaus Iohannis.He also reiterated that Romania does not support the idea of a separate European defence."It is very important not to lose sight of the fact that we defend ourselves by being NATO members, and Romania does not accept discussions on a separate European defence or in parallel with what we do in NATO, because that would not work. The European Commission has been given the task of coming up with a White Paper on defence and we will have a discussion on defence at the European Council in June. We may already have some conclusions by then and it would be good, today, for the discussions to already lead to the first lines of action," president Klaus Iohannis added.  (Photo: www.presidency.ro)