Italy, in the NATO Defense ministerial, “said that it does not agree” to make a long-term “commitment” to provide “40 billion” euros a year in military aid for Ukraine, as proposed by Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. “It would have been 3 and a half billion per year for us, given that we already have difficulty reaching the 2%” of GDP allocated to defence. When we reach 2% we will reflect on further investments”. This was said by Defense Minister Guido Crosetto, in Brussels on the sidelines of the ministerial meeting.
The money from the long-term aid package for Kiev, the minister clarified, “would have been additional” to the 2% of GDP allocated to defense. The 40 billion euros per year of military aid to Ukraine, Crosetto continued, are “a postponed discussion”. From the ministerial meeting “emerges NATO’s commitment to building deterrence, an increasingly stronger defence, a commitment from NATO on the part of almost all NATO countries to increase 2% of GDP to more significant percentages. I reiterated the difficulties in Italy, linked to the constraints of the European stability pact, saying that you cannot have a position here and another two kilometers away”.
“Maybe – he noted – they should be politically agreed together, because otherwise some countries, like ours, have difficulty reaching and respecting the commitment. The 40 billion per year for Italy is not on the agenda”. Military aid to Kiev “we continue to give it: I am preparing the ninth package. Now the commitment is to reach 2% which is already problematic, I repeat, for countries like Italy”, given “the European constraints. We cannot add other ambitious objectives, also because I am not in the habit of making commitments that I then know I cannot respect”, he concluded.
