Welcome
Foreign Minister Wadephul prior to his departure for Estonia and Denmark
Foreign Minister Wadephul issued the following statement today (28 August 2025) before departing for Estonia and Denmark:
The Baltic’s security is also our security in Germany. That’s the message I will be taking with me today on my first official visit to Tallinn.
In the Baltic Sea region, you get a strong sense of the extent to which this security is under threat. It is where Russia’s shadow fleet is up to no good, where cables are being cut, buoys moved and GPS signals jammed – it is where we see Russia using its entire toolkit of hybrid aggression. Estonia and the Baltic states issued warnings early on about how real the dangers are. Today, we benefit from their far-sightedness and expertise in the EU and in NATO, and we want to further deepen this cooperation.
Security is also a focus of our wide-ranging exchange with our neighbour Denmark, a country with which we cooperate more closely than hardly any other, and with which I have had a deep connection all my life, being from Schleswig-Holstein myself.
That we need to do a better job of securing critical infrastructure in the Baltic Sea and in the North Sea is something Denmark is advancing, also within the context of its Presidency of the Council of the European Union. Because, in Europe, we all benefit from clean beaches and secure trade routes, as we do from reliable power lines and data cables.
Exchange between our societies is another key pillar of our cohesion in Europe. Our German-Danish projects – for example with a view to cutting red tape and simplifying ways of reaching agreement at the administrative level – bring people on both sides of the border closer together. We want to build on that.