 Okay, I'm going live in 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm delighted to welcome you today to the IINA webinar this afternoon, and we are very pleased to be joined today by Madame Nathalie Noiseau, who is a member of the European Parliament and Chair of the Subcommittee on Security and Defence, who has been generous enough to take time out of her schedule to join us this afternoon. Madame Noiseau will speak for about 20 minutes, and then we will go to questions and answers with our audience. You will be able to join the discussion using the Q&A function on Zoom, which you should see on your screens, and please feel free to send your questions in throughout the session as they occur to you, and we will come to them once Madame Noiseau has finished her presentation. We would appreciate if you could give your name and affiliation when you're putting forward your questions. And just a reminder that today's presentation and Q&A are both on the record, and please feel free, of course, to join the discussion on Twitter and using the handle at IIEA. So now may I formally introduce Madame Nathalie Noiseau, MEP. She is currently serving as a member of the European Parliament, and she is the appointed Chair of the Subcommittee on Security and Defence, and is also a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. And prior to joining the European Parliament, Madame Noiseau led the Resistance List, a campaign initiative of French President Macron during the 2019 election, European elections. And previously, Nathalie Noiseau served as Minister for European Affairs in the French Government from 2017 to 2019, in the course of which she visited Ireland. And prior to this, she was Dean of the École Nationale d'Administration, for five years, and a diplomat within the French Foreign Ministry. So the world has seen two major political events in the past three months, change of president in the United States, and the final act of the Brexit decision of 2016. So in her address, reconfiguring security and defence post-Trump and post-Brexit, we will hear a very timely assessment of these events. And Madame Noiseau, we look forward to your address with considerable anticipation. And the virtual floor is yours. You're most welcome. Well, first of all, I would like to thank IIEA and you personally for having me today. It's a real pleasure to be with you virtually, even if I would have preferred to come back to Ireland, a country which is dear to my heart. I will immediately start in order to give time for questions and answers after my introductory remarks. I would like to start by mentioning that in Europe, we pride ourselves for an impressive achievement. We are in peace in the European Union for a number of decades, and we are proud about it. But is it really peace? And this is what I would like to question to begin with. Just to mention our neighbourhoods, all of them have become unstable. We do remember that since 2014, we know because of the annexation of Crimea by Russia that our Eastern partnership is fragile. It faces threats which all concern us. And recently, we saw frozen conflicts experiencing global warming, if I may say so, including in Nagorno-Karabakh last year. Western Balkans, they are in the heart of Europe, and a number of disputes are still unsettled between Serbia and Kosovo, inside Bosnia, Herzegovina, or even between two members of the EU, Croatia and Slovenia, there are still territorial disputes which are not really settled. If we look south, Syria, it's a sad anniversary. The demonstration started 10 years ago and repression immediately after. And we were notable, we in the EU, to participate decisively in a political settlement, although there are consequences for Europe, be them the number of refugees coming from Syria, but also terrorist attacks, which have been plotted in Syria. Libya is another conflict next to our shores, which is still ongoing with absence of state and presence of foreign actors, Russia and Turkey in particular, and this is a pattern that we see elsewhere. I should mention the Middle East peace process, whether it's really a process and whether it leads towards peace, is now questionable. And further down south, Sahel is a challenge for all the European countries, and Ireland knows it quite well because there have been, for quite a long time, Irish troops in CSDP missions. So our neighbourhoods are fragile. Multilateralism is a principle in which we strongly believe, and it has been more and more threatened in recent years. You see the United Nations Security Council very often blocked by vetoes. You see international organisation, WTO, WHO, UNESCO, where an American withdrawal leaves more room to non-democratic actors. It's not only that the US is not present, is that others have more weight. I would also mention the international arms control architecture, which is shaken. The INF Treaty is no longer in place. Open skies is in shambles. We don't know what will take place with New START, and we are of course very concerned by the status of GCPOA with Iran. We are also facing less conventional warfare, and on this we are not in peace. Hybrid threats do target European countries. Cyber attacks are numerous, and we saw plenty of them since the pandemic started. The same for disinformation, which has never been that harsh towards European countries and the European Union itself. And of course terrorism, I speak from a country which was hit several times by terrorist attacks. So the notion of borders is less and less relevant, and we have to rethink our security, our defence, and how we get organised. We also know that some countries have become more and more assertive, if not aggressive. It has been the case of Russia for quite a long time, and Russia is not cooperating with the West. It's more and more the case with China distancing itself from a more traditional foreign policy of non-aggression and looking inward. More and more you have an assertive China. You see what's taking place in Hong Kong. You see the number of threats towards Taiwan or assertiveness in South China Sea are concerns. You see Turkey closer to our borders, whose behaviour has changed quite a lot and not in a positive manner. For a number of years, Turkey was the country without foes. To nowadays, Turkey is more and more a country without friends, having an aggressive approach towards Syria, towards Libya, towards Eastern Mediterranean, Greece and Cyprus, and taking part in a conflict like Nagorno-Karabakh and being more and more present in Lebanon. You see a NATO member buying Russian military equipment. This is quite a new pattern of behaviours. Russia, China, Turkey, what they have in common is that they might be rivals, they might be competitors, they might not agree on everything, but they seem to be agreeing on one thing, joining forces to weaken the West. So this is also new to our security environment. All of this has been accelerated by the erratic foreign policy of Donald Trump. What he called America first or make America great again, turned into America alone and made the bad guys strong again. We are facing more assertiveness from rogue states or countries which don't behave the way they used to behave previously. There is a huge loss of leadership from the United States on the global stage. So how easily will it be overturned by a Biden administration remains to be seen? There are reasons for optimism. We have heard what Biden said already about his trust in multilateralism, his willingness to go back to the Paris Agreement, to go back to the World Health Organization, his willingness to lead by example, to go back to DCP OA and to lead an alliance of democracies. All this is positive and we should support this trend. But we don't know yet whether we will see a Biden administration or if I was a little bit provocative, an Obama three administration. When you look at the appointments being made, very competent, very brilliant people, they were all in place during the Obama administration were already this notion of non-intervention in global affairs, of pivoting towards Asia, of less commitment to Europe or to European security was already in place. That might still be something to discuss quite soon with the U.S. administration. There are many reasons to believe that this American administration will be inward looking, trying to heal the wants of a divided nation and what took place in the capital two weeks ago cannot be underestimated and rightly so. And then you also have to ask yourself whether the Democrat in Washington want an alliance between equal partners between Europe and U.S. or simply ask the Europeans to align with American positions and our priorities or objectives might differ with the United States. They might not contradict, but they might differ in terms of what is really a security priority for the EU compared to what is really a security priority for the U.S. In the middle of all this came Brexit and Brexit in foreign policy. First of all, we have to admit that as regard the participation of the UK into CSDP, there is the losses are small. CSDP was never something that the UK really owned and really valued that much. There were few staff or military from the United Kingdom in CSDP missions. There were reluctance towards efforts like European defence fund or PASCO. I'm pretty certain that we have made progress on European defence because the UK was leaving the European Union. But there is a lot that remains to be done because the UK is a key partner in terms of defence, in terms of foreign policy, and we have to find ways to work together. I am really disappointed that the British government was not interested in having foreign policy and defence included in the partnership agreement which was concluded on December 24th. They had agreed in the political declaration in 2019 but then they went back and they said that they were not interested. To my view, this is something that has to be complemented the sooner the better because when we work in the European Union on sanctions or when the UK works on sanctions toward a third state, we should work together. We should harmonise our decisions. We should keep on discussing in the UN Security Council about oppositions. I remember vividly when I was in the government, it was the moment where there was the Salisbury incident, chemical attack against two people in the United Kingdom. The unity of the European Union, where the UK was still a member state at the time, was impressive and probably impressive enough for Moscow to convince the Russian government to exercise restraint. So we have to get back this capability to work together to exchange intelligence or to decide to send troops together in the future and I do hope that the British government will change its mind. But in this context, what should the EU do? There have been dozens of seminars and discussions about strategic autonomy and I would like to go back to it for a moment. What does it mean, strategic autonomy? It doesn't mean that we are turning all back from a traditional allies. It means that we work in a framework of alliances when we can, but that we also act autonomously when we have to, when there is something that needs to be fixed and partners or allies are not interested. Let's take a look at NATO. Not all member states are members of NATO and speaking to an Irish audience, it seems obvious, but you have to remind it to other member states which are members of NATO. I was mentioning the issue with Turkey. When you have a country like Turkey member of NATO, it means that for the time being, until the Turkish authorities go back to a more friendly behavior, there are things that will not be dealt with within NATO because there is a problem of trust and of diverging interests and priorities. Very often the EU has wider competences than NATO to face hybrid threats. You need to have competences on health, on logistics, on cyber, things that are not always comprehensive when you talk about a military alliance like NATO or when you work in Sahel, you have to have a continuum between development assistance, support civilian missions and military missions. This is something that the EU is able to do, not NATO. If you look at NATO by itself, commitments by member states in terms of defence spending and equipment have not been met yet. The magical word or the magical one is not NATO. European defence efforts are not against NATO. They are a complement and they are also an acknowledgement. With COVID, we know better than before the price of dependency. Not only at the military or purely security level, but we saw that being dependent on medical equipment from third states was a weakness. We know by experience that the EU has to focus on its sovereignty. We know that the definition of strategic autonomy is wider than only security and military. The good news is that we have started enhancing our efforts towards European defence. We have started with CARD, a way to coordinate our efforts in terms of capabilities to know more what others are doing, where are the loopholes, where are the redundancies and where effort should be made. Then we have PASCO, commitments made by member states to work together on enhancing capabilities, on making operational interoperability a reality. You have 25 member states, member of PASCO. That's a lot. That's very inclusive. Maybe this doesn't help making it very ambitious but we have to learn by doing. Then we have, since the beginning of this year, the European Defence Fund. For the first time, there is money coming from the European budget dedicated to support efforts among member states to finance research and development for military capabilities. All of this makes it a toolbox. We have a toolbox in front of us. That's good news. The toolbox is fine but it's not enough if there is not common will and this is political will. We have to work to make sure that we see the word in a shared manner. It has started last year with what was called the strategic compass and the results of these efforts should be evaluated in 2022. It started by a shared assessment of threats coming from intelligent services from all over the European Union, bringing together in the same basket what they know about the outside world, how they see it, what sort of information they have. What is very interesting is that it was not agreed by the heads of state and government. It was simply put together in order for people to know how the word looks like seen from Dublin or seen from Tallinn or seen from Lisboa or seen from Ljubljana. It brings us more knowledge, more common strategic culture which should make things easier in the future in order to take decisions because we've talked to talk but now it's time that we walk the walk. We already see the results of these efforts. When you see that there are French troops in the Baltic states in Lithuania, in Estonia, under NATO command in an effort to face a Russian threat, believe me, that was not a natural trend of French military to begin with. They were not used to be present in this part of Europe. They didn't know that much of the current level of Russian threat. Now that they are sent there, they express a lot of interest about what they are learning, the experience they are making and vice versa. When you see that there are Estonian troops in Mali or Czech troops or Swedish troops under French command in Barkan, Sahel was not immediately on the radar of public opinion in these countries. But now there is this common acknowledgement that a terrorist threat or failed states in Africa are a concern for all European countries. So this is working progress. This will obviously remain complex. We are talking about competencies which belong to governments. They are national competencies and governments are jealous to keep their competencies. We know the rule of unanimity for foreign policy and defence decisions in the Council which sometimes prevented us from being speedy enough or sometimes is used by third states to try to divide and slow down the processes in the European Union. It happens. We have to agree with it. We are to admit it. There are specificities within the Union, neutral states, NATO states. We have to take it into consideration and that everyone feels comfortable with the way we are making decisions and implementing decisions. So they are opt-outs, they are constructive extensions as we have just did with European peace facility. The presence of troops underground in CSDP missions is only made on a voluntarily basis which allows for the EU to have a foreign policy and a defence policy. Whether it's enough is debatable but for the time being it makes things easier for a number of member states and we have to value it. We shouldn't be afraid of using different formats. We should not be too French. French like very classical patterns where everybody is involved and everybody abides by the same rules. In defence and security issues this is not the most operational way of doing things. This is why there was for several years this European intervention initiative which was put forward by France actually saying to countries if you are interested, if you are able and willing we can join forces, we can meet more often than not, we can exchange experiences, we can exchange information, we can exercise together so that we know each other better, so that we are trained together in order to be able if need be to act together smoothly without discovering who are the others and what are their habits on the ground. And it has provided with the possibility for instance to have European special forces in Sahel working together in a very demanding environment because they trusted each other because they get used to each other and they are able to act. But then again we have to include the UK and this was the idea of the European intervention initiative from day one to say to the United Kingdom you are welcome. It's not because you're not a member of the European Union that you cannot participate. It's the same with Norway, it's the same with other countries which have common threats, common challenges, a comparable strategic culture and with which we have to continue to work together. We have to explain it to American friends, we did it and we managed it with the Trump administration. I remember having been in a mission to Washington explaining the European Defense Fund to a super reluctant Trump administration. At the end of the day we made it so it will of course be easier with a Biden administration but let's always remember that America has its priorities which might not always be ours and we should not blame the Americans for what they do or what they don't. We should think of what we do and what we don't do and we have to be relevant partners of the United States. To this extent I do view Ireland as a very important bridge, a bridge with the United Kingdom and a bridge with the United States because you are a valued partners of both and a strong member of the European Union. So I do look forward to more cooperation with Ireland on these topics because I think it's really a priority for us in the present and in the near future.