The invasion of Ukraine has made greater co-operation on defence in the EU necessary “not only in the future but already now”, the Luxembourg prime minister, Luc Frieden, has said in advance of a visit to Dublin on Monday.
Mr Frieden is due to meet both Taoiseach Simon Harris and Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin on his first visit to Ireland since he replaced Xavier Bettel as prime minister of the Grand Duchy late last year.
In an interview with The Irish Times, Mr Frieden said: “It goes without saying that individual member states in Europe can neither defend themselves nor defend a neighbour with their own national means only. So therefore I strongly advocate closer co-operation in Europe on defence issues, together with strong co-operation with the United States.
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“In Ukraine we are defending the basic principles on which Europe was built after the end of the second World War and the end of the cold war – that is, that borders cannot be changed by force. And those things you cannot do alone, you need to do them together with others.”
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Mr Frieden declined to be drawn on questions about Ireland’s neutrality.
“Every country has to decide for itself what is the appropriate alliance in which it decides to organise itself,” he said. “I honestly don’t think it is for other countries to tell another country what it should do.”
But he notes that Sweden and Finland, previously neutral, have now joined Nato since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“They changed their mind but not because it was imposed by others but because they came to the conclusion that they should join Nato. So again, every country has to decide on the basis of its history, its geographical location and on the basis of its defence needs whether it joins a military alliance or not.
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“Let me tell you that Luxembourg was neutral until the second world war,” he added. “That neutrality was violated by Nazi Germany and we were very grateful for the Americans to have liberated Luxembourg together with some allies. And it was on that basis that we took the decision to join Nato.”
Asked what had been the experience of a small country in Nato, Mr Frieden said Luxembourg knew very well “that we cannot defend ourselves alone… so it is for us the fundamental guarantee that if ever again anyone was to attack Luxembourg, our allies would be there to help defend us.
“And that is also why, despite the fact that we are small, we are present when others call for our help, and that is much appreciated by our allies.
“We had soldiers in Afghanistan, we had soldiers in Kosovo, we have right now soldiers on the east flank of Nato. Not because we think we can make the big difference, but we know and our allies appreciate the fact that we are there and our flag next to their flag shows we are united in defending fundamental values. So our experience has been very positive.”
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Mr Frieden ruled out joining Ireland’s call for the EU to review the EU-Israel trade agreement. His stance will be a blow to Ireland’s efforts to persuade EU countries to review the EU-Israel agreement as a result of Israel’s military actions in Gaza.
But Mr Friedan hailed relations between the two countries “It’s very important the prime ministers of like-minded countries get to know each other,” he said. “Ireland and Luxembourg have a lot in common… We are interested in cross-border services, we are interested in international trade, we share on many issues the same values – the rule of law, these kind of things – so the second objective [of my trip] is to try and build an alliance, and a stronger alliance within Europe between Luxembourg and Ireland.”
Like the Irish Government (and everyone else), Luxembourg did not accede to European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s request to nominate a man and a woman for the country’s representative on the next commission – the idea being to ensure gender balance.
“First of all, diversity is very important for government, for the European Commission. But diversity is more than just men and women… I looked at a number of candidates that have been proposed – they have different ages, they have different professional and educational backgrounds, there will be a number of men and women, so I think diversity will be in the next commission.”
Many people in EU capitals regarded Ms von der Leyen’s request for two nominees as infringing of the national governments’ right to select their representative. But Mr Frieden declines to go there. “No… that is not the way prime ministers – at least those that I know – talk with president von der Leyen.”
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