 Rhywun digwydd i gynnwys ymliech, mysbysgol yn Prifysigol i'r Cymryd ym Mhlynol Llyfrgellai Plynyddol. Here is the Deputy Head of the European Political Strategy Centre at the moment which was formally the Bureau of European Policy Advisors. He provides strategic analysis support and advice to the President of the Commission, Jean-Paul Juncker, and the relevant members of the College. Yn 2015-2017, Mr Moldog was the Romanian Minister for National Defence, and before that he had a very distinguished career in Romania's diplomatic service, having served as permanent representative to the European Union from 2008 to 2015, that's somewhat of a record, I think. And as permanent representative to the United Nations from 2003 to 2008, he also served as ambassador to the Netherlands from 1999 to 2001. It's particularly interesting for us today to have Mr Moldog because he is coming from what we would in the Security and Defence Committee here see as the other side of the house. And of course, things have changed quite radically in the last decade or so in this whole area. There's been a very compelling set of security challenges, political changes and indeed economic facts which have justified a fresh look and changes in European defence. And of course, in the past year, the pace has been extraordinary. We've had the European global strategy for security and defence and the implementation steps that have been taken in that have been truly significant. More movement in that area as to quote Vice President Mogherini in the last 10 months than in the last 10 years. There also has been the significant change of the European Commission entering into this area of security and defence. We have the European Defence Action Plan, which is providing and undertaking to give significant amounts of money for research and development, capability building and also in the SMEs. We also have the European Commission, one of the reflection papers, which we have been here studying in the future of the EU 27 group on European Union defence. So, with all of that moving forward at a very rapid pace with the decisions of the European Council on PESCO, the whole idea of defence security nexus, we look forward very much, Mr Motto, to your views as to where this whole area is moving forward. Flores Jens. I was a little bit surprised even since I was looking up the ranks of previous speakers who posted here and saw among them at least three of the most influential Secretary-General of our times. But by all means I'm definitely glad to be here, if not for other reasons, but for the reason that this Irish saying is giving to me, the Irish saying allegedly goes like there's two kinds of people in the world, the Irish and those which they were. There's also all these... Sometimes, sometimes. Well, I certainly do, from what I know. There's also this acknowledging, this acknowledgement of what is considered the disproportionate contribution of Ireland to world literature, music or even comedy. And from that point of view, I had a while ago a personal first-hand experience with that. I was on a presidential visit to Dublin back in the 90s, and we had some doubts about the cultural event that was scheduled on the agenda. And then Ambassador, the first one we had here in Dublin, she managed to persuade us by guaranteeing that there will be at least three Nobel Literature Prize winners in the attendance. So that was very, very impressive. But good memories aside, I am supposed to share with you a little of our thoughts on the security and defence policy goals. And I find this a little bit daunting as we are in a neutral country. But at the same time, I think it is worth giving it a try only if I'm looking back at your proud history and the most impressive post-crisis achievements I've just been talking about with colleagues from the representation. I knew about them, but they seem to be even more impressive than I was aware of. But before I get into that, allow me a very brief excursion, a few steps back into probably better understanding how we got to even speak again about the European defence. And more than that, how defence got from a mere AOB item on the agenda. Let's be open about that to what it is right now, not only a full-fledged political priority of the Commission and indeed of the European Union. But I would go even further to say that it is a spearhead for the continuation of European integration in 27 and possibly even a major chapter in the new narrative for Europe. And I'd like on this one to perhaps quote President Junker who said in his major address last June in Prague on defence, he said about that that the call I'm making today is not only in favour of Europe of defence, it is a call in defence of Europe. So also with your concurrence, I'd like to take you into some of the reasons why amongst all it is the European Commission that has championed this revisitation of European defence. First, let me say that the defence is not entirely something new for the European construct. This was one of the first integrationist projects of post-war Europe was the European defence community. I would go even further and say it has some support when it was launched and I think it failed for some circumstantial political reasons. And like with every in success what followed was a certain negative inertia. But having said that, I would even posit that the defence is intrinsic and inherent to the European project and I never failed in this context to mention Western European Union which was with us for decades. And in a form or another we all have been affiliated to the Western European Union Ireland included if I'm not mistaken and the Western European Union was centred on a collective defence clause that was even mightier than article 540 of NATO's Washington Treaty. And that is taken up after this one in our treaty of today in the solidarity clause of article 42.7. To get where we are in terms of European defence we've been riding the wave of a very unique and unprecedented mix of security of geo-strategic and political factors and paradigm shifts. Let's note that the European Union is facing for some years now an enduring combination of threats and attacks basically in and from all its neighbouring regions and on its territory. If we get more on the political side we are faced with a call to take more of our protection and indeed our faith in our own hands, a call that is louder than ever before. This is coming not only from outside the European Union from our American partners and here I would note that President Trump was only the fourth line of American presidents calling for Europe to deliver on this expectation for greater extent. But also it's a call that comes from within the European Union as it goes down to soon be an EU of 2027. To be honest about it I'd like to recall that President Juncker had this early political intuition of prioritising defence policy on the political agenda of the European Commission as early as 2014 which makes it long before even the start of the presidential campaign in the US and far ahead of the British referendum. What I think helped down this road of putting European defence more to the front of the political agenda of the European Union was the dispelling of at least a couple of myths that would be floated around every time anyone would be entertaining the notion of European defence. The first myth was that if you were to build the European defence you would necessarily undermine, compete or overlap with NATO. I guess you'd agree with me that at least in Brussels there's very few left to fear that we are having any of those aims in relation to NATO. Secretary General Stoltenberg certainly does not fear that. Our cooperation has never been at such a high level and neither our American partners are entertaining this fear. The second myth that I think was largely dispelled by now was that was the one generated around the notion of a European army. Let us be very clear the notion of a European army remains a needed, I would say a needed guiding vision but it is nowhere on any drawing board at present. To this two myths I would also add a third relatively different one. From time to time it is flagged as a warning that the EU should do anything but not engage on a militarisation course and we shouldn't do that. That prompts me into wondering what are we supposed to do in fact in the face of this combination of lethal and very real threats I just mentioned. These are threats that everyone can see directly, have a first-hand experience of them no matter where they are, where they stand in Europe. What are we going to tell to the majority of European citizens that are listing their chief worries terrorism or cyber attacks? What are we going to say to a majority of over 75% of European citizens that think there is added value in more Europe on security and defence? I would even go to say that probably European defence is currently the most publicly supported political project in today's Europe. A word on the famed soft power of our European Union. This soft power will for sure lose some of its impact in the near future unless it is backed by some hard power credible capabilities so far off. Why am I saying that if we are taking a cursory survey of what the other major players on today's global scene are doing, what we are going to see is that not only all of them but really all of them are either keeping high levels or even multiplying their defence expenditure but they are doing more than that. You can see their respective foreign policies predicated to an even greater extent on weightier military arguments. So again I wonder what are we supposed to do in front of these shifting trends? Are we just going to stand idle, arms crossed and witness them indifferently or are we going to do something about that? It is already good that we managed to put an end to this trend, downward trend we've been on for a long time, repeatedly and severely cutting our defence budgets. That's mostly coming to an end. But if you look at the projections, the figures, they are showing you that we will not, as you spend on defence considerably more by 2025 than we do now. There are graphs in which the projection is slightly above a horizontal line. Which means that if we are to keep up with all these threats, challenges and competition, political, economic, industrial, if we are to keep up with those we have to do things differently. What does this mean, do things differently? It means first to allow for some more Europeanisation of how we do defence research, how we do capability development, how we do acquisition. Because it is simply untenable to go on doing 90% of defence research and technology in national formats to stay at 80% with defence procurement in national formats. And believe that it will be sustainable to carry on with this overlaps and with this fragmentation that is having at least two consequences. First consequence is a minimal waste of at least 25 billion euros per year. This is a loss because of not engaging into more defence cooperation and keeping on with a series of overlaps and fragmentation. And secondly, it means we will be further undermining our interoperability and deployability. That would adversely affect not only our ability to engage into EU missions and operations but also into those missions we signed up to in other multinational settings, UNP skipping and other commitments that you of all, Irish, are very concerned with. I say that similarly compelling arguments you would find if you look at the industrial and technological side of it, we need there to keep our leading role in the world in terms of manufacturing, defence manufacturing and innovation. And I say we need not be defensive when it comes to defence industry because this is a key industrial sector for Europe. It employs half a million of Europeans. It generates up to 1.2 million indirect jobs. It has an annual turnover of around 100 billion euros and it is providing cutting edge innovation that comes with positive spin-offs for civilian sectors like satellite navigation. It is involving 1350 SMEs. To give you a negative example, 100 million euro cut in EU defence industrial spending comes with 150 million euros that are lost from EU GDP, which would mean around 3,000 jobs lost out of which a quarter would be high skilled. On the point, in reverse, the multiplying effect on GDP growth for investment in defence research and technology is 30 to 20 times higher than with other forms of public spending. And this is where the commission comes into play because you know that defence policy remains an intergovernmental competence so the commission could play on its competencies in research and industrial policy in order to produce this very comprehensive and ambitious European defence package which came out beginning of June. The European defence package comes with a vision and provides a very powerful engine to fire that vision up. The vision is encapsulated in the reflection paper on the future of European defence and it is basically deployed around three alternative scenarios that all lead up to a defence union slower or faster with more or less ambitious. Basically it's defence and security cooperation, share defence and security and integrated defence and security in the first to be very short about them. The defence and security cooperation means what we have right now with moderate upgrading with a focus on capacities basically and which leaves the EU in conducting low intensity crisis management operations. Share the defence and security would come with more financial and operational solidarity allowing the EU to carry high intensity crisis management operations as well also fighting terrorism. Whilst in the third most ambitious scenario we would have the EU capable of conducting high intensity crisis management operations also in the face of external challenges. The engine is the European defence fund which on the one hand is able to finance integrally defence research cooperative projects and to co-finance up to 20% capability development projects that are undertaken by at least two member states or three and three industrial operators. During this financial perspective both schemes are run on a trial basis with 590 million euros that are allocated for the remaining ERD budgets. Whilst this will turn according to our proposals will turn into full-flesh programs that will see dedicated adequate budgeting under the next multi annual financial perspective to a tune of 1.5 billion euros every year. What we are doing here is not what is often derided as solving issues by throwing money at them. This is not going to be the case. The commission will work with member states in order to make sure that this kind of spending serves a strategic goal. The strategic goal we formulated at the beginning namely that of truly serving the event of a defence union problem. When we launched the defence package it was also done in anticipation of Pesco. Initially it should have been a joint occurrence, simultaneous occurrence. It wasn't the case, but we kept in mind the need to be consistent with Pesco to be consistent with the policy framing it was going to bring to the future defence union and with its strategic goal of enabling the most demanding missions. We are not supporting capabilities for the sake of capabilities but for the sake of serving these strategic goals. What we are in short trying to do here as commission is to provide the targeted financing to generate this reflex with member states and the defence industry alike of thinking defence cooperation. Not necessarily as a way to spend more, but as a way to spend better and to generate larger outputs which would lead over time to the development of all the ingredients that are making up a defence integration problem. To me the speed to which we will go from defence cooperation to defence integration pretty much depends on the level of ambition that we will be assigning to on the one hand the missions that we will be conducting under this Europe that protects which is a noble powerful concept introduced by the global strategy. On the other hand by the ambition we will have with regard to the defence industrial and technological base of Europe and its competitiveness. I need to be clear the commission has not made these proposals alone. We have had unprecedented and extensive prior consultation with member states with parliament before launching the package. The member states remain in the driving seat for the implementation throughout the implementation of the European defence fund process and I think President Junker put it more clearly when he said it is not the commission that is going to build by itself the defence union. Two more things on the further unraveling of this process. First of all we will be striving to pursue defence cooperation in as much joined up approach with security policy as possible. From that I want to dwell on this topic. You touched upon it but I just recommend this next to last strategic note of our political strategy centre the defence and security nexus if not anything else it's provoking and I'd be very happy to get your feedback on it. Second thing I'd like to say is that if I sounded a bit so far about the prospects of European defence is to try to persuade you that this time around it's not going to be at another force start with regard to European defence. We cannot afford that and we will not allow that to happen. Having said that we can ask ourselves whether we are there yet and we certainly are not there yet. There is still the need to have sufficient projects that are representative enough that are eligible and that are reaching a critical mass in order to allow us to go beyond mere defence cooperation. We still need some legislation to be adopted and we need the adequate financing to be approved. But having said that I think it is clear that the train of European defence has left the station that this is not utopia anymore and that European defence spending is happening already because we are imminently going to sign the first contracts on grants for defence research projects by the end of this year and I cannot leave you without perhaps inevitably a word on Brexit. Undoubtedly the UK is one of EU's prime defence forces and I see no point in downplaying the loss we will be experiencing here. On the other hand as you know better than I do, in terms of CSDP the UK's was not the most notable impact. You must have seen UK's recent position on future partnership in security on security and defence matters which let's agree on that is mixed for a substantial and quite positive read. However we should not mix up at this stage Brexit negotiations with elements that are clearly belonging to a different stage to the future relationship that is going to follow Brexit. If we prejudge the letter at this point in the negotiations we are only making intricate negotiations even more difficult. Right now the key concerns that need the resolution first are of course Ireland, citizens rights, financial settlement and as for us 27 our key priorities are to develop a defence union at 27. I am quite confident that we will be able to reach a meaningful convergence on security and defence matters with the UK. Having said that as painful and strange it may seem to refer to the UK in terms of third party I do experience this uneasiness but as painful as it is Brexit being Brexit for everyone it will happen unless something absolutely out of the ordinary happens it will happen on 30th of March 2019 and this is only bringing into question the wider issue of third party rapport with the European defence fund process. On that one what I can say at this point in time is first of all it is clear what the limitations of these relations will be because it is clear because they are coming out of EU law. We cannot spend EU money on non-EU undertakings. We cannot have a third party enjoying more rights than a new member and we need to secure to safeguard the integrity of EU decision-making process. Having said that and aside from these considerations I cannot possibly imagine that whilst we will be promoting EU preference we will do that at the cost of the expense of unravelling, of sacrificing valuable partnerships we might have on defence technology, on defence industrial cooperation with valuable or even key alliance partners. This will be difficult to conceive. To end up not on a said note I'd probably recall here something that C.B. Lewis said you're never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream and I hope this is a good paraphrasing for my remarks today. Thank you.