Greece’s Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias on Friday arrived in Bratislava on Friday for a the two-day informal ‘Gymnich’ meeting of EU foreign ministers. The talks on Friday are expected to focus on the situation in Ukraine, fighting terrorism and preventing radicalisation and implementing the EU’s Global Strategy on foreign policy and security policy issues.
At an informal meeting of foreign ministers of participating states in the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) held in Potsdam on Thursday, Kotzias said that real dialogue, building confidence and a “culture of compromise” was necessary in order to breathe new life into the OSCE’s security architecture.
Speaking to reporters, Kotzias said that the OSCE must be separated from international organisations like NATO and the EU, since it differed from these and “there was no point saying the same things everywhere”.
“The OSCE operates through dialogue, compromise but chiefly aims to restrict armaments and proceed with disarmament,” Kotzias said, whereas NATO was the “strong force” for defence and armaments and the EU was a “much more gentle and intelligent force working with the rule of law.”
Unlike NATO, the job OSCE was to seen whether it was possible to build a security architecture that Russia was part of, he added. He also proposed the creation of an OSCE-type organisation in the Eastern Mediterranean, with the OSCE’s assistance, to provide some form of security and control of armanent and disarmanent in the region.
Kotzias will also participate in a working luncheon on developments in Turkey and, on Saturday, in the ministers’ meeting with Turkish European Affairs Minister Ömer Çelik.
Finally, together with the foreign ministers of the Eastern Partnership countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia), the EU foreign ministers will discuss the prospects for deepening cooperation between the EU and the eastern partners.
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