 Again, thanks very much for the invitation to be here. It's really a fantastic be back in Ireland. I remember when I was political director, coming to Ireland and having the bilateral discussions with it was then Rory Montgomery, my counterpart, was extremely easy. He was just ticking all the boxes of agreements between Sweden and Ireland. And I also remember another occasion when I was here when with my wife and we were totally lost in the countryside and instead of, we actually were unable to find a place to stay. And we ended up having dinner instead. And everyone in that restaurant was just so engaged in our conundrum about finding a room. And in the end, we were all invited to drinks and all the kattrionas and fionas and anguses in that restaurant then helped us to, you know, call a friend who knew a friend. And in the end, of course, they found us a room somewhere. And I just want to say that had that been in Sweden, we would have spent that evening or night in the car. So it's always fantastic to be back. Can I hear the crowd? It's already support. I know that you've had some very prominent representatives from Brussels here previously, including of course the foremost, David O'Sullivan and also the EDA, Claude François Nou and the chairman of the military committee, et cetera. So I limit myself to talk about really what we do in the PSC and I'll say a little bit about that political and security committee. And the Lisbon novelty about the work in Brussels on the foreign policy side. I'll say a few words about perhaps if there are a few achievements, but also then end by talking about the challenges because there are certainly a lot of challenges left to be dealt with. The role of the PSC is about monitoring the international situation and then to try to suggest or recommend a policy response to that. And much of that is about preparing the decisions that the Foreign Affairs Council are taking. I mean, the foreign ministers come travelling about once a month and maybe this is revealing a secret, but it's certainly not so that they would sit down on Monday morning and negotiate those decisions. They're well prepared, most of them in advance. And the PSC has a fairly central role in doing that. We also prepare actually the councils of ministers of defence because we have an additional role which comes to the commons security and defence policy. And we do conduct, you know, political guidance and strategic advice to all our missions and operations. And that's, of course, thousands of men and women out in various operations and missions under the EU hat in various places in the world. So there, too, the PSC has a fairly central role. And I think... And then, you know, I just reread a little bit with the task, I forget sometimes. We're actually also tasked to implement and to make sure that the policies we agree on are actually then implemented. I think that perhaps one of the tasks that we haven't really had time to pay as much attention to us perhaps we should have. Now, the novelty... Well, I'm, as you said, I'm the permanent chair. I'm not even a chairman. I don't know why they choose the word chair instead of chairman, but in French it's président and I think that sounds a lot better than the chair because it's true that, of course, a chair is something that people will usually sit on and making that permanent is adding insult to injury. But what it is, is actually... I mean, the power I have is about setting the agenda. And that in itself is not pointless. But, I mean, let's remember that we will not get anywhere in the EU common foreign security policy unless everyone is agreed. And the Lisbon Treaty hasn't really changed that. It's all about getting 27 member states to agree, 27 member states, all of which have a veto, if you like. And as I... I think some of the examples will show that that has been quite a challenge, actually, to actually come up with anything during some of the issues surrounding the Arab Spring. The other aspect to this is when we set up the external action service, we, of course, took over from the rotating presidency, the chairing of the PC, but also other geographical working groups in Brussels. And that, at the same time, the external action service was, because it was set up in a way, at least initially, making use of the resources that existed already, particularly in the commission. And much of the staff that make up the external action service is therefore from the commission, with all the talents that they have and continuity in working, but usually fairly long-term kind of work with the rest of the world. The challenge that I see very strongly that we still have is about the part that we've... The hat we've taken over, which is about the rotating presidency, the six-month presidency that, in the past, was a driving force of initiative, of energy to put in into the European Union foreign policy. And the staff to do that. Presidency, I was part, as the chair said, I was part of the Swedish presidency in 2009. And of course, that was planned. Started two years before planning the initiatives, the issues we would be doing. We had, actually, we had books and folders about every possible conflict that could erupt during that, those six months. And of course, the first thing that happened, by the way, was a coup d'etat in Honduras, which was not part of what we had actually foreseen. And the first months were spent dealing with Honduras, where we had no embassy and very little knowledge. But anyway, I mean, that we can't, we don't have the luxury now to do that kind of forward planning because we're running it. And we're also charged with the responsibility of putting energy and leadership into this project. And I think that is a challenge. And I think therefore that it's quite urgent, also, that foreign ministers, foreign ministries are able to put forward the best and the brightest and provide diplomat's input into the external action service as it is being set up. And of course, the aim is to have one-third diplomatic participation and contribution to this new system in 2013. There are budgetary concerns here, though, because it's costly. Anyway, so those are some of the challenges that we're confronted with. The advantage of the PSE, the added value it has, is really about, you have 27 ambassadors present in Brussels who can meet basically whenever there is a crisis going on. So there's a sort of a very quick reaction to the possibility of setting an item on the agenda can be done very quickly. We met on Sundays and Saturdays and we meet, but the normal tempo is twice a week. We have not been able to keep that because it's usually, I think, has the average is probably around three times a week. So there's this presence of high-level representatives of all 27 member states readily available in Brussels. And that has a speed to it, which is quite good. If with the challenge about taking the initiative and the leadership, et cetera, is one very real, there is also something to be said about continuity. And I think that was the idea about the Lisbon Treaty, to do away with the rotating presidency, one that puts forward sometimes a national agenda, et cetera, in favor of something more continuous. And I think that it's tough to be a permanent chair, but I think it has an advantage also to the third countries, to the outside world who interact with us. They know who we are, they know where we are. And people, eventually also the member states will get used to this new system and the continuity itself, I think, has a lot of potential in it. What the PEC is also able to do, and we've done that quite a bit already, is to draw from, we have the network of EU delegations around the world. This is new because the rotating presidency could not draw upon them. They're there at our service, of course this is also a system which is still being built up to the full extent, but it's actually quite useful to us. We very often are able to bring a head of delegation into the PEC, to be there and to brief us about the real situation on the ground. Only last week we had the head of delegation from Iraq. There, Pakistan, the week before that, et cetera. So this is an added value. But not only that, because we can also put to member states, if we have a development such as in Belarus, for instance, remember there was a great turmoil surrounding the 19th December elections last year and the demonstrations that entail on the crackdown and repressive way of dealing with that from the regime. Very quickly we were able to, and I think that was not possible in the past, to put forward to member states very quickly an options paper. These are the EU instruments that we could consider putting into play. Sanctions, but also a lot of commission instruments that are there and could be channeled to support the opposition, some cooperation with agents of change, whatever else. And so I think we're able, if this works, and sometimes it will still need to be improved, but we have the possibility of actually putting all the EU instruments and put them forward to member states to agree on. And that's certainly an advantage. I think we've also been able to, during some of the situations we've had in the southern neighborhood in the Arab Spring where there's been concerns about consular, you know, EU citizens in Egypt during the demonstrations or in Tunisia, Cote d'Ivoire, et cetera. The PSE is, you know, there's a system of a consular network by telephone, et cetera, but the PSE is really able to, very quickly, as I said, to meet and to get the latest briefing, member states can share their information about, the information they would have about where their citizens are and what kind of resources they would have to make available if there's a ship leaving from, you know, the Libyan port. There and then there's a possibility to sort of feed that information immediately back to member states and they could put their citizens on that ship. So this has also become, it's very broad actually, this broadening of what we'd normally be doing simply because we're there and we're available and it's useful to the high representative. We also very frequently invite foreign guests. We've had foreign ministers of, you know, Sahel of African Union representatives. We usually, very often on a regular basis, meet with high representatives from the United Nations, from the OSCE, Secretary General. As an example, US envoys come in and we invite them in because they also, and I'll come to that later, I think the EU will need to coordinate much of our policies more than we've done in the past with partners, be that the, particularly the US but certainly Turkey and many others and therefore it's useful to have those kinds of dialogues. And I think that a Dick Holbrook or someone that was about example given that he's passed away but it was an example of someone who came into the PC coming to Brussels, the PC is there. You can, with one hour conversation with us, you immediately in that hour you reach 27 member states capitals in one go and you get a feel, they get a feel for where the EU and member states are on a topical issue in this case, Afghanistan, Pakistan. So those are the good things but let me say too that obviously running a shop like this with 27 member states who all have a veto is also a very cumbersome process. And you sometimes on a bad day, you of course think, what are we doing? Spending so much time negotiating commas in texts that are perhaps not always read by everyone we would wish would read it. One can understand that when other parts of the EU system deals with real national security related issues on nuclear energy or whatever else that everyone was really pushed for their positions but when it's about interacting, forming a common policy vis-à-vis an event going on somewhere else like Burma or Zimbabwe or closer to home than that but still outside the European Union you would think that given that we are a club of values that everyone had joined up to that we would sometimes be able to respond more quicker and that people would more easily let go of some of their hang-ups for the sake of the common good. Having said that, I still on a good day I would also be quite impressed by the fact that 27 vetoes are so easily put aside and especially in the PEC I would say there is a community of ambassadors empowered by their foreign ministers most of them have a direct access to their foreign ministers to agree and there's a sense of prestige that you don't necessarily feel good even if you brilliantly put forward your instruction and blocked everyone else I mean you could say that that's a good thing in a multilateral organization perhaps but in the EU most people will do a lot in order to communicate back to their capital that this doesn't really fly. We have 25 or 26 others colleagues who are against us and the advice most of my colleagues will then be for them to step down or to alter their positions in order to find common ground and I think most of the days I'm quite impressed by the fact that this works fairly well and I'll give a few examples of where it has worked actually surprisingly good. There's still things, you know the EAS is still our relationship with the commission is not always as good as it would be as it should be as Member States should expect it to be. I think you as representatives of Member States should be very watchful about how resources are used in Brussels so that we avoid duplication among what the commission is doing about what the EAS is doing. I think you should demand that the delegations that we are setting up as EU embassies if you like that they really deliver to all Member States sharing of reports etc. Some of that reporting is actually getting to be quite good. So I still think there is as always a need to be watchful about how EU bureaucrats get ahead of themselves. But having said that again, the PC remains a very important body for interaction between Member States and the external action service and the common foreign policy. I sometimes feel myself a little bit as a sort of a rubber duck at the head of the shooting gallery and you know when Member States are unhappy about a statement made in Damascus or that we've done this or that or not done this or that and why was Kathy Aschen in Beijing instead of Benghazi or why was she in Benghazi instead of Beijing etc. Some of that of course comes through the PC to me and that can be quite tiresome sometimes but on the other hand I also see my role within the external action service as I said very much as an advocate as a taking a bit the temperature of where Member States are in terms of how we are doing. Looking back at the first, I guess it's 10 months now since I took on this job and since we introduced the system of a permanent chair, the whole Arab Spring, I think, I mean apart from that being a very fundamentally very positive thing happening in authoritarian countries, it's also been quite good institutionally looking because I was among those who were quite frustrated about how institutional discussions in Brussels takes a lot of energy away from the things that we should be doing, especially on the foreign policy side. And starting this year with everything that has happened, we've simply have not had time to dwell too much about grievances we might have with the commissioner that they might have with us because this really have had to respond very quickly to things that have gone on and you can criticize us and people do about not having responded quickly enough or you know, but in the end I think from where I sit I think we've done fairly good in responding to the Arab Spring mostly. The EU has been way ahead of the UN for instance when it comes to punishing the former regimes in posing sanctions on the Mubarak's and the Ben Ali's and taking a lead on that. We've been quite instrumental I think in keeping up a multilateral framework on the Libya situation through these Cairo group efforts, EU, UN, African Union, League of Arab States, et cetera, always to avoid unilateralism and to keep a steady international pressure and support although that has not always been easy, especially not with the African Union when it comes to the Libya situation but we've certainly made that effort. And I must say that coming in on both Tunisia and on Egypt early on, you will understand and appreciate that member states, if you look at the whole range of the Union, come into a discussion from very different viewpoints. Some have long standing economic relations with a certain regime and are keen not to distract from stability, et cetera, and to make sure that we stick to what we have and stability perhaps is sort of the catch word when we start these discussions. For some, for others, it's very much about human rights, democracy, and promoting change and transition, et cetera. And to square that discussion into a common view has not always been easy but given those starting points, I don't think we've done all that bad. People will say that on Libya, it was a bad moment for the EU CSTP that we did not take on what NATO did eventually to militarily observe the and reinforce the arms embargo, et cetera. I think I would beg to differ. I think it's the division of labor that emerged. It was probably the best one and I would say that for now, where we are now, the EU stands fairly well in both credibility and in the position with our various instruments to play a major role in the work that needs to be done, not just in Libya, but also in other parts of the Arab world. There are other issues much closer to or also in our neighborhood, which we've dealt with with various degree of success, but we've certainly done our share. I think I mentioned Belarus, I'll come back to it, but I think there we were able to actually put together a set of instruments, both carrot and stick, if you like, and supporting the opposition and the dissidents, which is quite useful. We have been working up this whole communication about more for more. I think the whole experience from the Arab Spring is that the EU should be much more careful about not supporting authoritarian regimes and that the ones that are submitting to and adhering to our values should be rewarded and the other ones should not. That's a novelty and that's a very important conclusion and that's been sort of always hammered out through consensus, not least in the PSE. On the Western Balkans, there has been some very interesting, I think, mediation efforts done that have not been so publicly known. In Albania, for instance, in the course of the elections in spring, a lot of turmoil, deaths, et cetera, and the EU, we were able to immediately send out mediator who could, on a day-to-day basis, first come to the PSE in the morning, get an endorsement from the messages that he would send to the parties that were on the different sides in the Albanian political context and travel to Tirana and convey then the very strong messages based on a sounding out of where, not just the EAS, but where the 27 member states are and the expectations that we would have on the various Albanian parties. And this also, I think, is fairly new and has been quite successful in this case. The Bosnian case is another one where Kathy Ashton could travel to Bosnia and to convey again a message based on very much sounding out in the PSE about where member states are in terms of expectations. And for countries whose overriding goal is to exceed, eventually, to the European Union, those kind of messages can actually have an impact. On the Belgrade, Pristina, this is a very tricky issue. The whole Kosovo issue remains very tricky. You know that there are five member states who have not recognized Kosovo and, of course, this adds to the complication in a way. On the other hand, I wanted to say that in spite of that, there is a very strong EU commitment to this dialogue that the EU is running between Kosovo and Belgrade, which is really the only show in town when it comes to actually building confidence between these two. And in combination with holding out to the EU perspective, both Belgrade and Pristina, this is potentially very important. That effort was tried in New York for a while with the EU there. It didn't work. And I'd like to say here that the PEC, again, approved its worth because bringing difficult issues that do not necessarily work elsewhere into the PEC and Brussels have helped. In New York, you will have, obviously, you know, you have member states who are permanent members of Security Council. For them, the EU choice, the EU common position is not always the first choice, not in New York anyway. But if you bring an issue to Brussels, the inclination of coming to a common ground is much stronger, also among, in this case, UK and France. And this is a case in point where we're actually able to seal a deal among ourselves on the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue with Belgrade in Brussels that was not able to be sealed in New York. Now, Middle East peace process, I mean, I realize that some of the things I list as successful examples are far from resolved, but I'm talking more about the fact that I think we've done our part in trying to come up with a common EU response to it. Middle East peace process, the final example I wanted to take, and that's, of course, a situation that continues to be extremely difficult. But I don't think that the EU has ever had such an important political role as it does now in the Quartet. And it, of course, has to do with the fact that the U.S. is back down slightly. But it's based on, and you will probably wonder about the EU unity, given that there was a vote in UNESCO where everyone was all over the place. But let's not forget that the EU has some very strong and clear positions on the Middle East peace process that have been formulated time and again in the last two years in various council conclusions. And that stays, and that remains the opposition. And that has not been entirely easy, because there, too, member states come in from fairly different starting points. But I just wanted to say that, and this is something that the PC has been quite instrumental, and these very few weeks go by without a deliberation on the Middle East peace process and a very strong effort to keep the EU united. And that's not just an issue that concerns the EU. Actually, the Palestinians are very keen that the EU keep together. They want Europe to be united, and they also know that when Europe is united, the EU has a common line. There are very many other important players, Switzerland, Norway, and others, who usually joins up to those positions. Now, is everything hunky-dory, far from it? I would, before opening the session on questions and answers, I would like to just say that I think we should be concerned about the fact that the European mood is one of inward-looking debt crises. A lot of political energy is spent on trying to get our economic act together, and rightly so, given where we are. But of course, the concern is that this will take away energy from the foreign policy side. I say that because I work with that side of the house, but also I think there are many out there, outside the European Union, who have expectations for the EU to continue to play an important and proactive role in the global scene. I think we have to ask ourselves, do we have the energy to come back and really play a credible global role, given where we are on the inward-looking discussion that is going on now? The European relative weight is not increasing. It's the other way around. There are new players, Brazil, India, Russia, China, et cetera. The same discussion, by the way, that we are having here about how others that are more important now is taking place in the US. They feel the same way as we do. What does that mean to us? Well, I think we have to analyze that. Our populations are not growing, our economies are not growing the way others are, and we just need to relate to that. I think there's another concern, and that is about one of our main assets have been the attraction of the European Union as a union. And this has been very powerful in creating and promoting reform in our neighbourhood, especially in the Western Balkans, but also in Eastern Europe. Where is that today? Does the European Union continue to be an attractive union to join? I think the economic grievances we're going through have an impact on this, but I also think that, unfortunately, the political momentum and the political signals that we're sending out has perhaps not been as clear about what is there in the end of the tunnel for some countries, Turkey, being perhaps the best example. I think we should be concerned about that. The other thing is about resources in general and what they mean, not just in the faith and the energy that we need, but also in terms of actually putting men and women on the ground. Military expenditure will go down. It's actually very high in Europe, and we have a lot of people in uniform. If we add up, I think there's about 1.7 million, but the very few of them are actually deployable internationally. I think that should, that in combination with the fact that the US is not as committed to European security in terms of keeping their forces here. I think there's a lessons to be learned about the Libyan operation, where the European countries took the lead. The US, for one of the first times, actually put themselves on the back burner, but I think everyone who has been involved in this, I haven't, but I hear from those who were that that operation was no way would have been carried out without some key capabilities that the US have contributed. What does this mean? When the US is cutting down their expenditures for defense, and so are we, I think we need to do a look very seriously at this pooling and sharing of our resources, that we must come together much more to see how we spend our money in defense, and it makes sense, I would argue, to do that more jointly. It doesn't have to be the European Union necessarily, but the European Union through the European Defense Agency actually do contribute with a certain amount of an umbrella to make sure that we spend our money wisely in all the things that will be necessary in the future. Why do we have 27 military headquarters or military staffs in a Europe, which is not, I don't think anyone would argue that we are threatening each other, but we certainly need to do more together? I don't want to put too much focus on the military side of this, but I think the EU is actually quite well suited to deal with some of the new security threats. If we're able to put together the civilian things we're doing, civilian experts, much of the corporation aid, et cetera, that lies within the commission and member states, if we're able to do more of this in a comprehensive way, as we're trying to do now in the Horn of Africa, for instance, I think that's a little bit where the future will lie, but it will cost, and I hope that there's still a readiness to provide resources. The same thing about civilian resources, if we argue that that's one of the EU's niches is about providing military, sorry, police, judges, et cetera, while the fact is we have difficulties in recruiting that time personnel to our missions. Of course, many of these are needed in their respective countries, but it's also a question of costs. So having said all this, I just think there are, I would argue that the recipe for dealing with some of these challenges is more cooperation, not less, among ourselves in the European Union. It's also about reaching out to working more and better and more effectively with strategic partners, be they the US, Turkey, and others, Brazil, India. And even if we were able to do that, there would still be a lot of issues, still one damn thing after the other, to deal with where the PSE will continue to have a role. I think the Middle East peace process is something that we really need to get to terms with because it adds a very poisonous tone to a lot of the grievances that are going on in the Middle East, and I think there's more urgency to this than has been in the past. Iran, let's not forget, that sort of hovers around all this in a very scary way. So there is, and I also think that the Arab Spring, we need to, first of all, be clear about that we are not running this, we can only come in as support to a limited effect to this, but it's very important that that turns out good. And I think Egypt is one of the cases that needs to be watched in the near term. I'll just stop there and be glad for the camera to be turned off, and to go to the question and answer session. Yeah? Yeah.