European Council in Copenhagen on strengthening European defense and further support for Ukraine

Prime Minister Andrej Plenković is participating in an informal meeting of the European Council in Copenhagen today. In a statement to the media upon arrival at the meeting, he said that today's discussion will focus on two key topics - strengthening European defense and further support for Ukraine.

Regarding the strengthening of European defense, in the context of global security circumstances, and in particular Russia's aggression against Ukraine, he explained that the adoption of a series of financial instruments that support the strengthening of defense capabilities at the national level will be discussed.

He recalled the SAFE Instrument, for a Secure Europe, from which Croatia has been allocated 1.7 billion euros for investments in the capabilities of the Croatian Army.

"This will give us the opportunity to achieve, with a very high probability, the goal that was accepted at the NATO summit in The Hague - which is the allocation of 3.5 percent of GDP for defense with an additional 1.5 percent for defense-related activities," said the Prime Minister.

Broad consensus on support for Ukraine

The second topic will be the situation in Ukraine, and the Prime Minister is confident that a broad consensus will be created today on support for Ukraine, both in military terms and in terms of supporting peace efforts to end the conflict.

He reiterated Croatia's position that ending the conflict must lead to a just peace, and this means respecting the territorial integrity of Ukraine.

Croatia, he pointed out, has extensive experience in the post-conflict period, which it constantly makes available to its partners.

Likewise, he added, we advocate the opening of negotiations on Ukraine's membership in the European Union and we believe that the remaining obstacles will be resolved.

Answering questions from journalists, he referred to the long-discussed proposal of 170 billion euros, in the Euroclear financial depository in Belgium, which are available as a kind of guarantee before the payment of war damages committed by Russia.

Croatia is in principle in favor of this, he said, but we want to guarantee complete legal certainty for any such agreement.

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