Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković used the MED9 Summit in Split on 7 October 2026 to assert that the Mediterranean has become a strategically important area where many of the European Union's key strategic interests converge, citing a backdrop of growing global instability.
The gathering in Split served as the concluding event of Croatia's presidency of the MED9 grouping, with the summit producing a joint declaration — the MED9 Split Declaration — as its formal output.
Plenković's remarks framed the Mediterranean not as a peripheral concern but as a focal point for the EU's overlapping security, migration, and strategic autonomy interests, though the prime minister did not elaborate on specific policy measures in the published statement.
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