On 1 December 2021 in Riga, the Latvian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Edgars Rinkēvičs, met with the United Kingdom’s Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, Elizabeth Truss; the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Estonia, Eva Maria Liimets; and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania, Gabrielius Landsbergis, for a discussion on cooperation between the United Kingdom and the Baltic States, economic and security policy topics in particular.
During the meeting, Edgars Rinkēvičs welcomed the active cooperation between the Baltic States and the United Kingdom at both political and expert level. We regard close cooperation with the United Kingdom as vital in view of global challenges that we spoke about at the Meeting of NATO Foreign Ministers in Riga these past days, the Latvian Foreign Minister noted.
The partners also discussed the development of the NATO Strategic Concept, which is one of the main tasks to be accomplished before the NATO Summit in Madrid in 2020.
Latvia can provide significant contribution to the manufacturing, in NATO’s territory, of equipment much needed for critical infrastructure, Edgars Rinkēvičs said. He named 5G equipment, for instance routers and spectrometers. Latvia’s private and academic sectors are prepared to also get involved in the development and manufacturing of prototypes for semiconductor micro-circuits, the Latvian Foreign Minister noted.
The Minister informed his counterparts that Latvia is going to host the Three Seas Initiative Summit and Business Forum in June 2022, and he welcomed the United Kingdom’s current interest in the Three Seas Initiative. Edgars Rinkēvičs underlined that the participation of the United Kingdom in the next year’s summit and the business forum in Riga would be highly important.
Background information
Two meetings of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Baltic States and the United Kingdom took place in 2021 – in Tallinn on 11 March, and in Chevening, England, on 11 October.