President of Latvia Egils Levits met with President of the Bundestag Dr Wolfgang Schäuble today, welcomed the Latvian-German bilateral relations, and highly appreciated the role of Dr Wolfgang Schäuble as a politician and thinker in the unification of Germany and the common democratic life of Europe.
Both parties discussed issues related to bilateral relations between Latvia and Germany, strengthening of democratic values in Europe, and they touched upon the future of Europe and current issues of the European Commission. They also discussed European security policy, transatlantic relations, and the challenges of the European information space.
As the meeting focused on the future of the European Union, President of Latvia Egils Levits stressed the need for a new vision of the future of Europe after the Brexit and for the Member States to approach the process of outlining the future perspective in a creative but value-based and democratic way. According to Egils Levits, one requires new tools to adapt to the challenges that the development of digital communication, pseudo-democratic trends, and threats to the information space cause every day. President Levits stressed that those challenges should not be overlooked and that new solutions should be found to reinforce the importance of democratic values for future generations, which were entering the politics of EU Member States currently. Both parties also agreed that the history experienced provided a good lesson and that the issues of European historical memory should be explained to each future generation so that they could make a meaningful contribution to the development of Europe.
As for European security, the officials agreed that the European defence should be strengthened as a part of overall transatlantic security of NATO. President of Latvia Egils Levits also highlighted that Latvia had reached 2% of the gross domestic product for defence spending together with several other European countries and that was the goal, which all NATO member states should achieve.
The working visit will continue with a meeting with Federal President of Germany Dr Frank Walter Steinmeier and representatives of the Latvian diaspora.
