Dear all,
First of all, I would like to thank the Estonian government and my good friend Minister Hanno Pevkur for the warm welcome here in Tallinn.
It is a delight to be here, in this beautiful city, and in the country that will take up the Presidency of the Council of the European Union in the second half of 2017, earlier than initially foreseen.
The Minister and I had a very fruitful discussion on issues of common concern regarding migration, security and border management.
I was pleased to hear from the Minister that all these issues will feature prominently on the political agenda of the Estonian presidency.
We have quite some homework ahead of us in these areas, and the European Commission is very much committed to working closely with Estonia, as well as the current Slovakian and upcoming Maltese Presidency.
Teamwork is key. Estonia is very experienced in information technology.
I am sure Estonia will inspire the EU and I hope that we will make not only good progress, but also be innovative in order to improve the functioning and interoperability of all the large-scale IT systems in the field of migration and security.
Better linking our systems will improve information exchange.
This is essential to better managing migration, our external borders and ensuring our security in a world of increased mobility and threats.
As I have said many times before, we need to make sure that all our dots are connected, that information is not only shared, but also more easily searchable.
This information is our strongest weapon against terrorism, and we must become better at using it.
Today I visited EU-LISA here in Tallinn – the EU Agency that manages our large information Systems in the area of borders, migration and security.
I had very fruitful discussions with Director Krum Garkov and his team.
EU-LISA will be at the epicentre of this ambitious interoperability and our Security agenda, and its role will become exponentially more important.
EU-LISA’s work will also be relevant in the future, to put in place our Entry-Exit System as well as ETIAS.
In this context, EU-Lisa has the potential to develop into a real ‘ International Counter Terrorism (ICT) centre of excellence’.
But EU-LISA also has a crucial role to play in our comprehensive migration policy, not least in the collection of fingerprints of asylum seekers and irregular migrants, as we have proposed with the reform of the Eurodac Regulation.
On migration more generally, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Minister and the Estonian government for their efforts to relocate and successfully integrate dozens of refugees from Greece to Estonia.
I hope you will continue your efforts and, of course, the Commission will continue to support you every step of the way.
Finally, with the recent launch of the European Border and Coast Guard, Estonia and its Baltic neighbours know that they can count on a fully-fledged European support mechanism to better manage our external borders.
Because we all know that the migration and security challenges that we are facing, are not limited to only a few countries, and that our systems and tools must be future-proof in case these challenges shift.
I am glad to be able to count on Estonia as a key player in our European approach to find common solutions to common challenges for our Union.
I want to finish by saying that Estonia can also continue counting on the European Commission as its partner.
Thank you.