President Meloni’s press point at the NATO Summit

INTRODUCTION BY PRESIDENT MELONI

Good afternoon to you all. 

The summit that is coming to a close has been an important one, not only in terms of the commitments undertaken but also considering the very complex context in which it took place. I think the most important thing is the Alliance’s unity and desire to make itself stronger, which in the current context is very significant.

We of course welcome, with satisfaction, the start of a ceasefire in the crisis between Israel and Iran. We must continue working on this issue and, as you know, our goal is to reach negotiations and an agreement between Iran and the United States on Iran’s nuclear programme. I spoke about this yesterday with the President of the United States, Donald Trump, and I told him what I also reiterated during my address to today’s plenary session, that the same determination is needed to reach two other important ceasefires: in Ukraine, where Russia does not seem to want to take steps forward (quite the opposite); and, in Gaza, where, as I have said several times, the situation is not sustainable.

Then, as I was saying, this was also an important summit in terms of the commitments undertaken: these are significant commitments and, I would like to reaffirm, they are sustainable commitments for Italy. This spending is obviously necessary to strengthen our defence and our security in a context that requires it, but in a dimension that allows us to take on these commitments knowing already that we will not take a single euro away from the government’s other priorities to defend and protect Italians. 

So, we are talking about an increase in defence spending of 1.5% over ten years, so not far from the commitment Italy already made in 2014 when it spent 1% of GDP on defence and committed to increasing that figure by another 1%, with that commitment then being confirmed by all the governments that came before me.

In addition, there is spending of 1.5% on security. These are resources we need to spend, and in any case do spend, on much broader areas than just the matter of defence. As I have said many times before, as you know, the matter of security today is a particularly broad domain that concerns the issues of border defence, irregular migration, critical infrastructure, military mobility, and infrastructure in a more general sense, as well as artificial intelligence, research and technological innovation. These resources are therefore needed to keep this nation strong, as it always has been.

Moving on, we obviously raised a number of matters at the summit that are very important for Italy and, in particular, attention to the Alliance’s southern flank, where I also tried to explain what the threats are to my colleagues: we see Russia now focusing more and more on the Mediterranean after losing the naval reach it had due to its influence in Syria, and there are also many hybrid threats and many hostile players working on the Alliance’s southern flank. This is clearly one of the issues we care most about, and I also think, as I said to our allies, that when we review our capability targets (i.e., the capability targets set for the Alliance), a very serious reflection will be required.

The world is changing and so is defence. If we look at what we have seen in Ukraine, as I explained yesterday in Parliament, where some of the greatest results achieved by the courageous Ukrainian people have been obtained with drones that cost a few thousand euro and that destroy technological instruments costing much more, we understand that we are heading towards a world in which, for example, a satellite can be more strategic than a tank. This needs to be discussed, because the issue is not only how much we invest, but what we are investing in and what kind of world we are moving towards.

The last message I have for you, and which I am pleased about, is that the Summit has confirmed full support for Ukraine from all allies. We will shortly also be having a meeting with President Zelensky, who is here, and I think this is another very important message. I believe I have covered everything.

[Courtesy translation]