Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what discussions he has had with his EU counterparts on co-operation with NATO over maritime security.

Cooperation between NATO and the EU in maritime security, as well as in other areas of security policy, is a key priority for HMG, and one which we raise regularly in discussions with EU and NATO counterparts.

The UK strongly supported the tasking from the NATO Warsaw Summit in July for improving such cooperation, where we believe NATO and the EU have complementary roles to play. In the current operations, this mean cooperation in the Aegean Sea, to tackle irregular migrant flows between Greece and Turkey, and co-ordination in respect of Operation Sophia in the Mediterranean Sea, and anti-piracy activities in the Indian Ocean.