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BRUSSELS – The proposed candidate for High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas, highlighted on Tuesday that the EU must achieve clear results in its enlargement policy in the next five years.
“In the next five years, we must have clear results. Enlargement is a geostrategic investment and makes our Union stronger, and the new members of our European family more stable and secure,” Kallas said in her opening speech at the hearing in the European Parliament.
She added that “today’s problems of our neighbors” become our problems tomorrow, and that the EU has great attractive power for the Western Balkans, Ukraine, Moldova.
The former Estonian prime minister was appointed as the High Representative by the leaders of member states and should replace the Spaniard Josep Borrell. The EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy has a dual role, chairing the Foreign Affairs Council and also being Vice-President of the Commission, and therefore, like other commissioners, must undergo a hearing before the competent committee in the European Parliament.
Kaja Kallas belongs to the liberal political group and is the daughter of Siim Kallas, who was also an Estonian prime minister and a European Commission commissioner.
As her first priority, Kallas emphasized the victory of Ukraine in the war against Russia.
“The situation on the battlefield is very difficult, and that’s why we have to help every day, today, tomorrow and for as long as needed, with as much military, financial, and humanitarian aid as necessary,” she said.
She pointed out that it is unacceptable for Russia, Iran, and North Korea to produce more military equipment and ammunition than the entire Euro-Atlantic community, and that the EU needs to strengthen its defense industry, which would also make NATO stronger.
“We need to invest more in defense and take more responsibility,” said the former Estonian prime minister, adding that Europe does not need to have a separate military alliance, and that NATO is the best solution.
On relations with the new American administration of Donald Trump, she said that the EU and the USA are stronger when they work together and cooperate. “We need to build relationships on what is good for both sides,” she said.
She earned a big round of applause from the deputies for her response to Alexander Sell, a representative of the far-right party Alternative for Germany, who accuses the EU of being dictated by the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, that it is wasting billions of euros on aid to that country and announces that it will continue with it while the new American president Donald Trump announces that he will stop financing them and that the German economy is suffering and shrinking while the Russian is growing.
“Everyone wants peace, but there is a difference between peace and peace; we want sustainable peace because if we give in to the aggressor and say that it’s okay to take what they want, then all aggressors will conclude that aggression pays off and if aggression pays off somewhere, then it serves as an invitation to use it elsewhere. Therefore, we must support Ukraine and not give in to Russia,” Kallas said. (November 12, 2024)
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