The EU has “listened to President Trump” and “everyone is doing more” to boost European defence spending, High Representative for Foreign Affairs Kaja Kallas told Euronews Today as NATO leaders gather in the Hague on Wednesday for a landmark summit.
Kallas was asked by Euronews’ Shona Murray to comment on NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte’s pre-summit message to the US president, lavishing praise on his handling of the Western alliance and the conflict in Iran.
“You are flying into another big success in The Hague this evening. It was not easy but we’ve got them all signed on to five percent,” Rutte wrote, in a message posted by Trump on social media, referencing the target for GDP expenditure that Trump has called for from NATO members.
“Mark Rutte is speaking Trump, I think he’s speaking the language that President Trump definitely understands and he needs to get this across,” Kallas said. “I think it very important that everyone is doing this 5% and agreeing to this.”
“President Trump has been calling for this for quite some time – that everybody should do more for their own defence, and Europe is stepping up, we definitely have listened to President Trump and everyone is doing more,” she said.
‘Weakeness provokes’ Putin, Kallas says
Asked if the US was diverging from the other NATO members in its approach to Ukraine, Kallas said, “when member states agreed to spend more on defence, that also means that they have more means to help Ukraine”.
“When it comes to Europe we have agreed that we will support Ukraine militarily, and we will also put more pressure on Russia so that they would also want peace in order end this war so it is very clear for us,” she said.
She said security throughout the world “is very much interlinked”, citing North Korean soldiers being active in Ukraine, support that Iran is giving to Russia, and sanctions circumvention by some countries, “so if we don’t push back aggression in one place, it just is a call to use aggression elsewhere”, Kallas said.
Increased defence spending is the best path to deflect Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression, Kallas said.
“I don’t see into Putin’s mind but looking back how he has been working, he understands strength,” she said, adding: “If we invest more into defence, we are stronger so it doesn’t provoke him.”
“Weakness provokes him: if he thinks that he’s stronger, he can take up this war, then he will take up war, but if he sees that we are strong, then he doesn’t look our way, and that’s what we are doing.”
