Donald Trump’s return to the White House is a wake-up call for Europe to move into action and warned that the era of outsourcing our security guarantees to Washington is over, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said.
Speaking at an event yesterday in Athens, the Greek leader said Trump was right to criticise NATO members who do not meet their 2% defence spending pledge emphasising that this will no longer be tolerated.
He said Europeans and certainly some of the big countries have been complacent in their outsourcing without paying up and picking up the fair share of the bill.
“This is no longer going to be acceptable, it’s done”.
On 3 February, an extraordinary summit in Belgium will deal with the matter of Europe’s defence and will try to address the controversial funding question.
For Mitsotakis, the 2% target now belongs to history and said he was convinced that it will be higher but not 5% as Trump recently suggested.
Greece has been traditionally meeting the 2% GDP threshold, and last year, it exceeded 3%.
However, Mitsotakis called on the EU to find smarter ways to deal with defence spending amid a strict fiscal framework.
He said at the upcoming summit, he will ask for more fiscal space strictly for defence investment above the expenditure benchmark to encourage EU countries to spend more on defence.
Lastly, regarding future transatlantic relations and the tariff threats, he said similar threats were made in 2016, but a full-blown trade war was avoided, something he hopes will be the case this time around.
[ATB]
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Publish date : 2025-01-21 21:49:00
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