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British Prime Minister Andy Burnham is set to meet with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Berlin on Thursday, with the pair expected to discuss the growing threats from cyber-attacks and sabotage across Europe.
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According to Downing Street, the UK and Germany are to commit to deepening cooperation on cybersecurity and countering sabotage and other hybrid threats.
“The hybrid threat from our adversaries – especially Russia – extends across Europe and beyond, threatening our collective security,” a government press release said. “The UK and Germany will jointly act on identifying and disrupting hybrid activity, wherever it comes from.”
The new joint-partnership will see the two nations share information and coordinate action to monitor and disrupt threats as they seek to “degrade hostile actors’ capacity to operate in Europe.”
“Attacks on our infrastructure, our businesses and our democracies are not a distant threat. They reach into people’s homes and workplaces, and they are designed to make us weaker and more divided,” Burnham said.
“Britain and Germany are joining forces to find, expose and disrupt this activity. Security and growth go hand in hand, and both must be felt in every town and city in our two countries,” he added.
Burnham’s meeting with Merz comes amid increasing warnings of hybrid threats in Europe and follows a particularly notable drone attack on Leipzig/Halle airport in August – which Berlin has accused Russia of orchestrating.
It also comes after the prime minister’s recent comments that rejoining the European Union is an option for the UK.
Speaking at the Labour Party’s annual conference in Liverpool in late September, Burnham told the audience that Brexit had “done more harm than good” and that the UK needed a clear strategy on its long-term relationship with the EU.
“We will not give Britain the clear path we need into the rest of this century until we decide on a long-term relationship with what is still our largest market,” he said.
