Our main objective remains a peaceful world. Working towards this objective in the two-year period 2024-2025 we will continue to create and support opportunities for dialogue. We will pursue our long-standing work on confidence-building measures as tools in the process of building peace.
Despite its many shortcomings, the European Union remains largely a force for good in the world. We support a safe and prosperous Europe in solidarity with its neighbourhood, including North Africa and the Sahel, the Levant, the Gulf and Red Sea Regions and the Caucasus and Central Asia. The EU must work in partnership with these regions in a spirit of mutual respect and solidarity and we will make our modest contribution to this.
Although there is an increasing understanding of the importance of the nexus “Climate Change, Peace and Security”, this view however is not yet universal. We welcome the declaration on this topic made at COP28 in Dubai in December 2023. We will work for this theme to also feature at the forthcoming COP meetings in Baku in 2024 and in Belan in 2025. We will organise events and provide spaces for discussions on this theme and how to take it forward.
Globalisation has long stopped being a panacea. However, the need for connectivity to support economic prosperity, decrease dependence and enable positive interaction between nations remains high. Radicalisation, although not caused by globalisation, spread across continents as a consequence. We will continue to study this phenomenon in its religious, political and social dimensions, and to advocate ways of combatting it.
