Source: NATO
(As delivered)
Secretary Blinken, Dear Tony, it’s good to see you again.
Thank you for your personal commitment to the Transatlantic Alliance, to NATO.
I look forward to sitting down with you and all the other NATO foreign ministers to discuss preparations for the upcoming Washington summit. Thank you for hosting the summit. I’m certain that will be a great summit where we’ll celebrate the most successful, enduring, and strongest Alliance in history.
It will be a great summit both because we are going to celebrate the Alliance but also because we are going to make important decisions on how to strengthen our collective defence, our deterrence and defence and the good news is that NATO Allies are now really stepping up when it comes to defence spending. We will have new numbers by the summit, but I expect that at least two thirds of allies will invest 2% or more in defense and we’ll be able to announce more precise numbers, soon.
We will address how to further strengthen our support for Ukraine and thank you for the leadership the US is showing but also good to know that European Allies and Canada are also stepping up .
And thirdly, we will address how to further strengthen our partnership with our Asia Pacific partners.
So once again, welcome, it’s great to see you.