LISBON - German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on Wednesday that the European Union could no longer afford to have decisions blocked by individual member states.

"Qualified majority voting can lead to fairer...results for all of us," Baerbock told a conference in Portugal's capital Lisbon. "We must be capable of acting efficiently and swiftly."

Baerbock said that EU countries are often not even able to draft a press release "because they cannot agree on the same wording".

(Reporting by Catarina Demony; Editing by Andrei Khalip)