Source: NATO
(As delivered)
Good morning.
Today we will convene NATO Foreign Ministers here in Prague in this beautiful historic city.
We will discuss the preparations for the upcoming Washington Summit in July and there are three main topics.
First, Ukraine. Allies have provided unprecedented support to Ukraine. Just last week Belgium announced 30 more F-16s and Spain and Sweden announced new packages of more than one billion euros each for air defence, for artillery and for other important equipment for Ukraine. These and other announcements come on top of the US decision of 61 billion extra US dollars for Ukraine.
But we will address how to make sure we sustain and step up our support for Ukraine and I have proposed that NATO should play a bigger role in the coordination and supply of security assistance and training for Ukraine.
I also proposed a multi-air financial pledge to ensure more accountability and predictability in the support we provide to Ukraine because we need to make sure that Moscow understands that we are prepared for the long haul in our support for Ukraine.
We will also address our deterrence and defence. We have new defence plans. Allies are allocating more forces, high readiness to NATO and this is also reflected in the fact that more and more Allies are investing more in defence, meeting the 2% guideline. The Czech Republic for instance will be at 2% GDP for defence this year.
Thirdly, we will address how to further strengthen our global partnerships, in particular with our Asia-Pacific partners Australia and New Zealand, Japan and South Korea. They will be at the Summit in July and it is important to strengthen the partnership with them to address more global competition.