Dear colleagues,

We often speak about effective multilateralism. I believe the adjective matters at least as much as the noun.

Multilateralism is not an end in itself. It is a tool. And its value should ultimately be measured by its ability to solve problems that individual states cannot solve alone.

This is particularly important when we look at Europe and the Indo-Pacific.

Our security challenges are not identical. But they increasingly affect one another.

Security today is not only about armies and diplomacy. It is also about maritime routes, critical infrastructure, technologies, energy, critical minerals and supply chains.

Any disruption in one part of the world can have immediate consequences thousands of kilometres away.

This creates a strong case for closer cooperation between Europe and our Indo-Pacific partners.

But there is one principle I would particularly like to stress.

Economic security must not become another name for protectionism.

We have learned that excessive dependencies can make our economies vulnerable. But the answer to vulnerability is not isolation. It is diversification.

Our prosperity has been built on open trade and international economic cooperation. We should therefore be careful that legitimate efforts to strengthen resilience do not produce new barriers, new dependencies or a fragmented global economy.

This is also why our cooperation should be practical.

The EU’s Security and Defence Partnerships with Australia, India, Japan and the Republic of Korea give us frameworks to work together on concrete challenges. We should use them.

The same applies to our economic relations. We should make full use of existing trade agreements, advance the recently concluded ones, and continue removing unnecessary obstacles to trade and investment.

And we should use institutions such as the WTO and the OECD for what they are supposed to do: provide practical frameworks in which open economies can cooperate even when our interests are not always identical.

The Czech Republic will chair the OECD Ministerial Council Meeting in 2027. We see this as an opportunity to contribute to precisely this discussion: how to combine economic security, resilience and competitiveness while preserving the benefits of an open global economy.

For me, this is what effective multilateralism should mean.

Not cooperation for the sake of cooperation.

Cooperation that delivers results.

Thank you.