“Our decisions taken at the Warsaw Summit on leading the NATO battalion to be deployed to Estonia, contributing to the security of the southern flank in Romania, leading the NATO Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF) in 2017, our second largest defence budget among NATO allies, contributions to Operation Sophia and other missions of the Union and the Alliance - all speak of the immovable commitment of the United Kingdom to European security,” M. Fallon said.
Lithuanian Minister of National Defence Juozas Olekas thanked the United Kingdom for its large contribution to strengthening security of the Baltic states and for the plans to stay an active defence partner. “We look forward to the continued active participation of the UK in strengthening European security and to the Northern Group becoming an important forum of coordination and consultations. British military capabilities undoubtedly remain vital for both, NATO and the European Union,” J.Olekas said.
At the Nordic-Baltic Ministerial on November 9 the Ministers also addressed the most topical security topics: implementation of the Warsaw Summit decisions, fight against Daesh, coordinated assistance of Nordic and Baltic countries to Ukraine and Georgia.
When addressing multinational operations, Minister J.Olekas stated that Lithuania will begin contributing to the US-led mission in Iraq, Inherent Resolve, in February 2017 by deploying military instructors to train Iraqi forces in composition of the Danish contingent.
Finnish and Swedish Defence Ministers welcomed the decisions made at the Warsaw Summit to deploy NATO forces in the Baltic states.
By tradition the Nordic-Baltic Defence Minister meetings are attended by defence ministers of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia and the Head of the Defence Department of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Iceland. Apart from the aforementioned participants, the Northern Group format includes German, UK, Dutch and Polish Defence Ministers.
