I think that we have to be faster and to take risks. I need you to report fast, in real time on what is happening in your countries. I want to be informed by you, not by the press. Sometimes, I knew more of what was happening somewhere by reading the newspapers than reading your reports. Your reports come sometimes too late. Sometimes, I read something happening somewhere and I ask “what [does our Delegation [say]. For the time being, nothing. “For the time being, nothing” is not affordable. You have to be on 24-hours reaction capacity. Immediately - something happens, you inform. I do not want to continue reading in the newspapers about things that happened somewhere with our Delegation having said nothing.
I do not want to “blame and shame”, but this is something that I have to tell you. I want you to be more reactive, 24 hours a day. We are living in a crisis, you have to be in the crisis mode. Explain what is happening - quickly, immediately. Even if you do not have the full information on the first hours, show that you are there. I should be the best-informed guy in the world. Having all of you around the world, I should be the best informed person in the world – at least as much as any Foreign Affairs Minister. I am “Foreign Affairs Minister of Europe”. Behave as you would behave if you were an Embassy: send a telegram, a cable, a mail - quickly. Quickly, please, react.
Take more initiative. Be ready to be bold. Whatever we do, there are taboo-breaking decisions. We break taboos on the Ukrainian war, using the European Peace Facility to buy arms – something that at the beginning [was] “oh, that is impossible, we have never done it”. “We have never done it” is not a recipe. Maybe we have to start doing things that we have never done in the past. When we hesitate, we regret it.
I think that, for example, [of] the discussion on the Ukrainian Training mission [EU Training Mission in Ukraine]. We had been discussing about the Ukrainian Training Mission before the war for months. “Do we have to send a training mission to Ukraine?”, “No, come on, Ukraine, training mission, military in Ukraine...”. And then, boom, the war comes and people said: “we should have done it.” Yes, we should have done it. And now we are doing it quickly – well, quickly for European standards. Quickly for European standards means a couple of months. But unhappily, the war is still there, our training mission will have had the possibility of acting.
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