The NATO summit ends at the age. In the final declaration formalized the commitment to increase defense expenses to 5%, while Ukraine’s “irreversible path” disappears towards the alliance.
“The allies undertake to invest 5% of the annual GDP in the fundamental needs of defense and in the expenses relating to defense and safety by 2035in order to guarantee individual and collective obligations, in accordance with article 3 of the Washington Treaty ». This is the final declaration of NATO Summit in the Hague.
“The allies reiterate their sovereign commitment to provide support for Ukraine”, but for the president Volodymyr Zelensky There is very little to celebrate, in the final declaration, in fact, No reference is made to the “irreversible path” of Ukraine in NATOnor is there any mention regarding the financial aid to be provided to Kiev, as happened last year. On the other hand Zelenskypresent at the Hague, this year he was unable to participate in the actual summit due to the opposite opinion of the United States, Türkiye, Hungary and Slovakia.
According to what reported by Telegraphin the final press release the countries of the alliance would have agreed to moderate their rhetoric towards Russia, in the declaration we read that the NATO countries are “united in the face of profound threats and security challenges, in particular the long-term threat represented by Russia for Euro-Atlantic security and the persistent threat of terrorism”.
The language used therefore no longer provides for a clear definition of the Russian invasion in Ukraine as a “war of aggression”. Almost certainly the American president Donald Trump It will have played a decisive role in defining this change of tone, given the attempts to relax with Moscow.
Despite the substantial derogation given to Spain compared to the figure of 5% of the GDP to be spent on the rearmament and defense, today the secretary general of NATO Mark Rutte Once again he wanted to reiterate: «Politicians must make choices with suffering budgets, they must find the money and this is not easy. But I’m sure we’ll get there ».
The feeling in many European chancellers is that this figure will be difficult to reach, given the technical constraints related to European stability pactwith the countries that were already in infringement that cannot take advantage of the derogation provided by Brussels. Without forgetting the very high debt of numerous countries (including Italy). In this regard, the Hungarian premier Viktor Orban He said that “it is possible to reach 5% in defense, even if it is not easy, but we must change the method of calculating the budgets in the EU otherwise it is impossible, nobody will do it, it doesn’t matter what they say”.
Much will be played on the intermediate objectives, for which “The allies agree to present annual plans that show a credible and incremental path to achieve the goal»Of 5% of defense expenditure, which however will be broken down into a 3.5% to be spent in actual military hardware, and the remaining 1.5% which can instead be spent in sectors and sectors even connected to defense, such as cybersecurity and strategic infrastructures.
In any case, today’s summit represents a great victory of the American president Trump, who on the low contribution of the allies to the Atlantic defense had always trod the hand, in these first months of his second term as well as in the period of his first presidency (2017-2021).
Just to dispel any doubts about “European enslataton’s European enslavement”, the German chancellor Friedrich Merz he ventured into one Excusatio Non petita: “I want to clarify that the decisions we take are not taken to do anyone a favor, but rather on the basis of our awareness, of our belief that NATO as a whole, and this is mainly applies to its European component, must commit more in the coming years to guarantee its defense capacity”.
Merz continued: “All this will happen with great agreement, because we agree that the situation has changed and the threat concerns in particular Russia, which does not only threaten Ukraine, but the entire peace and the entire political order of our continent”. Exactly the type of rhetoric that President Trump wanted to leave out of the final declaration of the NATO summit.
