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Your Majesty,

Your Royal Highness,

Ministers,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Dear friends,

I want to thank the Government and people of Sweden for hosting this second EU Indo-Pacific Ministerial Forum in Stockholm here today.

I also want to stress my appreciation to all our partners from the Indo-Pacific who are here today. Thank you for taking time in your schedules to be with us and to attend this important event.

This Forum follows the previous one in Paris last year, which was very successful.

Together, today, we are turning this Forum into a regular event that has to take place every year.It has to take place every year because Europe and the Indo-Pacific are highly inter-connected and inter-dependent. We are, like it or not, and we like it. And we want to be more interconnected and more interdependent.

Because in today’s world, there is nothing that is too ‘far away’. The Indo-Pacific region is the EU’s economic neighbourhood. Interdependence has clear geo-political and security dimensions, as my colleague the Swedish [Foreign] Minister [Tobias Billström] has mentioned.

It is clear but some figures can help illustrate this point.

• Asia and the Pacific – your region - will contribute two thirds of global growth this year. Two third of the global growth will happen in the Indo-Pacific region.
• Every day, 2,000 ships transport goods between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea towards Europe.
• Last year, our imports from the Indo-Pacific region accounted for almost 40% of total extra-EU imports – 37% to be exact. And our exports to the region accounted for 25%.

These figures are impressive. It shows that our economic links every day are getting stronger and deeper.

But at the same time – unhappily - the global security environment continues to deteriorate. There is less trust among the main players. There is a weakening of the respect for international law, multilateral rules, and norms that govern our work and living together.

As a result, force and coercion are on the rise. It is not the law, it is the force which is increasingly determining the behaviour of the world.

And many countries feel forced to expand their military investment.

World military spending last year grew again to an all-time high, reaching of 2.2 trillion US Dollars.

One may believe that this is because Russia’s war against Ukraine. Certainly, the military expenditure in countries in Europe is 30% higher than in 2013, before the takeover of Crimea by Russia.

And across Asia the trend of increasing military expenditure is even greater. Last year, the military expenditure in Asia and Oceania was 45% higher than in 2013. In ten years, we have increased our military expenditure by 30% and by 45%. This shows that every day we live in a more insecure world.

But we [Europe] have vital interests in the stability and prosperity. We have vital and common interests in our prosperity and security.

Unhappily, Russia’s aggression against Ukraine is keeping us very busy, consuming a lot of our energies, but it is not ‘just a European war’. The principles at stake affect everyone. And it clearly has global consequences in terms of food and energy prices for almost all human beings. So, we all have a clear stake in each other’s security.

That is why we launched in 2021 the EU’s strategy for cooperation in the Indo-Pacific. With that we want to show that we want to contribute to the stability, security, and prosperity of the Indo-Pacific [region]. Because your stability, security and prosperity are also part of ours.

Last year, we also launched the first-ever EU strategy for the Gulf region, because we want to be more present and more active across the Indo-Pacific and build strong partnerships.

Last year, at our meeting in Paris, we said that our Indo-Pacific Strategy was about concrete action, not just rhetoric.

So, one year later, what have we done. Allow me to cite some concrete examples of what we have achieved since last year´s meeting.

In December the EU signed Partnership and Cooperation Agreements with Malaysia and Thailand.

We have opened new trade and investment opportunities, including:

• The conclusion of the negotiations on a Free Trade Agreement with New Zealand.
• The ongoing Free Trade Agreement negotiations with Australia.
• The resumption of negotiations on a Free Trade Agreement with India. We also launched a Trade and Technology Council, which will meet next week for the first time in Brussels.
• Free Trade Agreement negotiations have been relaunched with Thailand, and are ongoing and intensifying with other Indo-Pacific partners, including Indonesia and Kenya.

Last year, we established digital partnerships with Japan, the Republic of Korea, and Singapore. In October, we signed the EU-ASEAN Comprehensive Air Transport Agreement, which is of extraordinary importance for the connectivity among us.

Connectivity is a key word. It is a strategic concept.

That is why we launched the EU Global Gateway - a plan to boost EU engagement in the region and provide strategic investment in the development of infrastructure. About 20 Global Gateway priority projects have been launched and will be implemented across the Indo-Pacific region: from hydropower and solar energy plants to transport infrastructure.

The EU is also contributing to regional security in the Indo-Pacific. We have a naval operation - [EUNAVFOR] ATALANTA - which is now covering a larger spectrum of tasks in a much larger theatre. It was conceived to fight piracy in the coast of Somalia, now it is a maritime security provider along the African coast. We have conducted successful joint naval exercises with Indo-Pacific partners with Djibouti, India, Indonesia, Japan, Republic of Korea, Oman, and most recently with the United States. We are developing a Coordinated Maritime Presence in the North Western Indian Ocean to optimise the use of assets that EU Member States are deploying in the region.

These are just some examples.

Ladies and gentlemen,

They show that we have an overriding interest in maintaining peace, stability, and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific.

Allow me to cite an ancient Greek historian - that today is very fashionable to cite - Thucydides, when he argued that convergence of interest is the surest way of keeping good relations between states and individuals.

Shared and common interests, values, priorities [and] cooperation: these are the key words of our relationship. That has to be a two-way relationship.

It is not just about what the EU can do in and for the region; it is about what we can do together in equal foot, knowing that we live in a complex, dangerous world, that requires common cooperation among us to achieve common goals.

And we, Europeans, have as much to listen and learn from the Indo-Pacific region as we have to give.

That is why we are meeting today in Stockholm, on a beautiful sunny day, in a beautiful place, with your Majesties.

Thank you very much for being with us. Thank you to all of you for coming and attending this meeting.

Link to the video: https://audiovisual.ec.europa.eu/en/video/I-241213