Council of Europe Secretary General Marija Pejcinovic Buric, European Commission Vice-President Dubravka Suica and several European foreign ministers said on Saturday at the 14th Dubrovnik Forum that COVID-19 has shown that multilateralism and solidarity are necessary in today's world.

There is no clearer example of a cross-border challenge than COVID-19, said Pejcinovic Buric at the panel “Unmasking the Geopolitics of a Post-Pandemic World” at Dubrovnik Forum.

We have seen that multilateralism is important, she added, stressing there was too little multilateral cooperation in the pandemic.

European Commission Vice-President for Democracy and Demography, Dubravka Suica, said that the virus had not affected all EU member states equally.

If one lesson should be learnt from the pandemic, that is the importance of solidarity, Suica said.

Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Foreign Minister Bisera Turkovic considers that a lesson one should learn from the pandemic is that international cooperation is not an option but a necessity for all of us.

There is no available alternative, Turkovic said.

Maltese Foreign Minister Evarist Bartolo said that last year nine countries had spent $72 billion on the modernisation of nuclear weapons but could not find the $50 billion to vaccinate the entire world.

Since only 10% of the world population lives in the European Union, it is necessary to take care of other parts of the world, notably Africa, Bartolo said.

Slovak Foreign Minister Ivan Korcok said that multilateralism was the best option for small countries like his.

Without it, we would have a problem, it is a matter of survival, he said.

Slovenian Foreign Minister Anze Logar said that the European Union had been ill-prepared for the pandemic but the crisis provided an opportunity to discuss where we are and what we should fear.

State Secretary at the Cypriot Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kornelios S. Korneliou, pointed out the intrinsic value of the multilateral model, saying that a clash of great powers is a situation where everyone loses.

His Hungarian colleague Tamas Vargha stressed that the pandemic was a global problem that could be solved only through global and regional cooperation.