NATO foreign affairs ministers are meeting in Brussels on Thursday 3 and Friday 4 April to discuss burden sharing and defence spending, support for Ukraine and cooperation with the countries of the Indo-Pacific region (Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand).
This meeting is being held less than three months before the organisation’s summit in The Hague, scheduled for the end of June, and will enable the Allies to make progress in their preparations, while discussing pressing security challenges.
The ministers, who will be welcoming their US counterpart Marco Rubio for the first time, will be discussing burden sharing and defence spending. “Strengthening our collective defence (...) is the foundation on which NATO was built and remains our number one priority”, the Alliance’s Secretary General, Mark Rutte, said on Wednesday. “We live in a dangerous world and in the face of these and other challenges, we must build a stronger, a fairer and more lethal NATO”, he said.
While Europeans and Canadians have increased their defence spending in recent years, US President Donald Trump wants it to rise to 5% of GDP and Europeans to spend much more (see EUROPE 13579/1). In 2014, NATO set the ambition for its members to spend 2% of their GDP on defence by 2024, a target achieved by 23 Allies. The new ambition “has not yet been finalised. We will finalise it with the defence ministers at the beginning of June. But we can assume that we will need to spend much more than 3% to achieve the targets, close the gaps and ensure our security”, explained Mr Rutte.
Beyond defence spending, the Allies will discuss how they can produce more and facilitate collaboration, exchanges, innovation and partnerships, to the benefit of all, said Mr Rutte.
The discussion between the foreign ministers, which will take place a few hours after the US announcements on new tariffs (see other news), are expected to also give the Europeans and Canadians an opportunity to find out the US position on the future of the United States within NATO and to remind Mr Rubio of their concerns regarding US policies on Canada, Greenland and the concessions made to Russia.
At the ministerial meeting on defence in February, US Defence Secretary, Pete Hegseth, warned that “stark strategic realities” would prevent the US from focusing primarily on European security, but so far the US presence within the Alliance has not changed (see EUROPE 13578/11). “There are no plans for withdrawal or anything else (from the US). We know that the United States is fully committed to NATO”, Mark Rutte sought to reassure on 2 April. The next US ambassador to NATO, Matt Whitaker, was approved by the US Senate on 1 April.
The Allies will then discuss the war in Ukraine, support for Ukraine, including via NSATU (NATO Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine), and security guarantees. “In the first three months of this year, Allies have already pledged more than €20 billion in security assistance for 2025”, announced Mr Rutte. On 10 April, at the invitation of the United Kingdom and France, the defence ministers of the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ will meet at NATO headquarters. The following day, it will be the turn of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group.
The ministers will then meet their counterparts from partner countries in the Indo-Pacific region to discuss security in the region, particularly the threat from China. According to NATO’s Secretary General, the aim of the meeting is to deepen cooperation and make it more concrete, including on the defence industry.
The NATO-Ukraine Council will meet over dinner. Ukrainian minister Andrii Sybiha will brief his counterparts on the situation on the ground and the negotiations underway for a “lasting and just” peace.
Finally, on Friday, the ministers will receive the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas. She will brief the Allies on the ‘White Paper for European Defence’ and the SAFE initiative, presented on 19 March (see EUROPE 13603/7). This discussion will take place the day after the informal meeting of European defence ministers in Warsaw, which will focus on support for Ukraine and the ‘White Paper’ (see EUROPE 13612/20). (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)