Thank you very much, Keir. It is good to meet a friend again and to be here with you We are friends, and we are Europeans, we are very like-minded. We share the same interests and the same values. We face the same challenges, but we are complementary also in defending our democracies.
I think there are three topics which we want to raise today. The first one is security and defence. We will discuss Ukraine. We are very supportive of the peace efforts and grateful to you for this. But since day one, we also have emphasised all the time how important it is that Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity is non-negotiable. And from day one on, we have supported together Ukraine, and we will continue to do so. On the other hand, we both also see that Europe at the same time has to step up its defence expenditure. We will discuss that.
I very much welcome that quite a number of countries have recently announced a substantial increase of defence expenditure.
And bilaterally, of course, we will discuss and work on a strategic security and defence partnership agreement, which might then pave the way to a joint procurement and UK participation in our SAFE programme.
I am very glad that we just had the energy conference, it was excellent. Indeed, we discussed that the North Sea has enormous potential to be a clean energy powerhouse.
Since many years, investors have been waiting to start with their projects. What they need is regulatory consistency and predictability. And this is something which, together, we can deliver.
The third topic we want to raise here together is, the topic of migration. We share the same objective. We have always fulfilled our international obligations. We have done this in the past. We do this today, and we will do it tomorrow. But it is us Europeans who decide on who is coming to Europe and under what circumstances – and not the smugglers and traffickers.
So there is a lot we have to discuss together and in the run-up to our Summit. It is an excellent ramp up towards it.
