Prime Minister De Croo on the eve of the NATO summit: “The only option is to help Ukraine win”

The summit will also discuss the investments of member states. “Our country has been very clear that it wants to achieve 2 percent (of GDP on defense spending, an agreement that NATO countries made in 2014),” de Croo said. “But in the end that’s 100 per cent higher. We will do everything we can to do our part.” He summarized the contributions made by our country to various NATO operations, including the Baltic states. In July, engineers should usually move to Romania to help build more permanent infrastructure for NATO forces.

NATO plans to increase the number of troops on high alert to 300,000 soldiers. What this actually means for Belgium is yet to be determined. “Our defense is greatly appreciated,” de Croo said. “If the request comes for a larger publication, we will respond to it.”

The NATO summit itself described the prime minister as a “historic”. “It was planned for a long time but now it is happening in a completely different context,” he said. “In the end, the essence remains the same. NATO remains a defense of our way of life.” Quoting a statement by French President Emmanuel Macron, he also said that the unity that the alliance has shown in recent months “is not what people expected when they said we were ‘brain dead’ years ago.”