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European defence must be improved, President Klaus Iohannis stated on Tuesday, but a parallelism between such structure and NATO "wouldn't help anyone."
"Creating a parallelism with NATO would not help anyone. Here is the first point that would become a vulnerability: in case something goes wrong, who is in charge? NATO or Europe? And already things would start getting into a complicated area. My opinion is this: much improved European defence, highly fortified defence industry, modernization. But everything should remain in perfect complementarity with NATO, and not in a parallelism with NATO. (...) A European army in this concept, to be independent, is not feasible in my opinion," said the president during the debate with journalists and representatives of the civil society taking place at the Auditorium of the Central University Library.
On the other hand, he underlined the importance of modernization, pointing out that almost all the states in Europe would need "better equipped, more modernly endowed", better trained armed forces.
"We have drawn together a project on European defence, which is called PESCO. It is a project that we are a part of, a project that is intended to reinvigorate the defence industry, research and so on. It does not therefore refer to the defence function through, so to speak, armies and armament. There are, indeed, in Europe, several relevant politicians who say that we must take care that in Europe we have our own, efficient, modern defence systems, which I think is OK, it is correct. But in my view and in many others' view, these should not be outside NATO, but must be complementary to NATO," said Iohannis.
As regards the statements by French President Emmanuel Macron, who said NATO would be "brain dead," Klaus Iohannis said that political statements should not be exacerbated.
"NATO is the guarantee of security for us. And these issues, what needs to be done to make it work better - because this is how I understand President Macron's statements, that there are things which are not going well enough - we will discuss these issues at the NATO summit to be held at the beginning of December in London. We should not try to exacerbate political statements. President Macron is obviously dissatisfied with certain procedures, approaches," he said.
On the other hand, Iohannis labeled the relationship with Russia as "a very complicated" one, noting that Romania shares the NATO approach in the field of security and the European approach in relation to trade and sanctions.
"The relationship with Russia is a very complicated one. Russia is trying to regain the lost spheres of influence. Russia is trying to increasingly militarize itself. We see troop movements on the flank that for us is the eastern flank, for them, obviously, it is the western flank. This is where Crimea is located. This is where the very complicated situation in Donbas fits in. In this sense, our approach to Russia is the approach we share with NATO, in the field of security, and it is the European approach, in terms of trade and sanctions. And with this approach we believe we have a serious stance which guarantees our security," said the president.
