Rome, February 19 (Prensa Latina) Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, during the Munich Security Conference in Germany today, called for an increase in defense spending in Europe to deal with crises such as the conflict in Ukraine.
According to an official statement published on the publication’s Fanpage digital website this Sunday, Tajani stressed that “European security is necessary if we are to be stronger within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).”
“We need to invest more in European defense if we want to protect ourselves,” added the minister, who in a recent interview alluded to the need for this continent to increase its military potential to compensate for US hegemony as NATO leader .
On January 26, in statements to the newspaper La Stampa, the Italian foreign minister acknowledged that “Europe has no real foreign or defense policy. We always walk behind the Americans (Americans).”
Regarding these issues, the High Representative of the European Union (EU) for Foreign Affairs and Security, Josep Borrell, has raised the need for a joint force of the countries of this community of at least five thousand soldiers from the end of 2021.
At the LIX security conference in Munich, which is ending today, Borrell pointed out that “we need to invest to be stronger in NATO and also to be able to act when NATO is not there”, and referred to the military strengthening of the EU.
Contrary to Tajani’s suggestions, Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto admitted last Thursday that his country would find it difficult to increase war spending, which now accounts for 1.38 percent of gross domestic product.
Crosetto specifically referred to the pledge by NATO member states to increase the defense budget by up to 2.0 percent of GDP, and clarified that “given the financial conditions, this is a difficult target to achieve”.
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