Press release

Foreign Secretary attends the June 2017 EU Foreign Affairs Council

On arrival at the Foreign Affairs Council in Luxembourg, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson spoke to the media.

From:
Foreign & Commonwealth Office and The Rt Hon Boris Johnson
Published
19 June 2017

Foreign Secretary’s arrival statement

The Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, said:

This is the first chance we have had to talk to our European friends and colleagues since some of the attacks that we have had in the UK. The London Bridge attack in particular of course, where most of the fatalities were from other European countries. We had 3 French casualties, 2 Poles, 1 very brave Spanish fatality you’ll remember.

So this is a chance for us to talk about that together on what we’re doing on counter-terrorism, particularly on occupying the space, the cyber-space taken up by the terrorists and working together, as the Prime Minister Theresa May has said, to deprive them of that space. To work with the internet companies, to stop them from allowing those guys to peddle their filth and their perverted ideology on the internet.

Obviously this is the first day of the talks on Brexit, and I think the most important thing is that, of course there’ll be lots of discussions about the nature of the deal we are going to do, but I think, on the discussion about money and so forth, I think the most important thing now is for us to look to the horizon. Raise our eyes to the horizon. Think about the future. Think about the new partnership. The deep and special partnership that we want to build with our friends and I think in the long run this will be good for the UK and good for the rest of Europe. That’s we are hoping for.

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Published 19 June 2017