Slovakia does not intend to be a country that will prevent consensus in the event of an increase in defense expenditure of individual Member States of the North Atlantic Alliance (NATO). There is still a great discussion before us, he declared Monday after the summit of the Bucharest Nine (B9) in Lithuanian Vilnius President of the Slovak Republic Peter Pellegrini, informs TASR.
The Slovak President explained that, according to the proposal, direct defense expenditures of NATO Member States should increase from the current two percent of GDP to 3.5 percent, and that at the same time it would be possible to invest another 1.5 percent in the investment of the so -called dual destination. “But of course, the question is how quickly these goals are to be achieved, somewhere on the table there is a reasoning that we could increase as Member States at 0.2 percent each year, which means that we could reach this goal in seven years,” specified.
In the negotiations, however, he said that Slovakia would be more suitable for at least ten years in which countries could gradually approach these numbers. He also called for some flexibility in meeting goals. “I announced that Slovakia will be a responsible partners who will not be built on the rear and defend the consensus, but will look for ways to compromise,“Pellegrini noted.
According to him, however, it is also necessary to take into account the abilities and possibilities of state budgets of individual states, pointing out the countries of the European Union, which is currently not currently reaching two percent of their GDP in defense. In this context, there will be an important discussion at the upcoming NATO Summit in the Hague, Huland, in three weeks. Its preparations were the main theme of the meeting in Vilnius.
“You know that it has been shown, and the war in Ukraine revealed it to us in full nudity that Europe as such and the European part of the North Atlantic Alliance is unable to defend itself in any way to defend itself in any way or such a great power, such as Russia with its huge army and huge industrial arms complex,” declared Pellegrini. That is why it is necessary to talk about strengthening the European pillar itself within the North Atlantic Alliance.
