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NATO Secretary General praises Italy's contributions to Euro-Atlantic security and highlights priorities for the Summit in The Hague

NATO - North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

12 Jun. 2025

NATO's Secretary General, Mark Rutte, visited Italy today (12 June 2025), ahead of the Allied leaders' Summit in The Hague later this month. He met Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and they took stock of final preparations for the Summit. He also participated in the meeting of the Weimar Plus group.

The Secretary General said that "Italy is an important Ally, active all over NATO territory, for example leading NATO's forward land forces in Bulgaria, and in many other NATO missions," adding that Italy has also "a very proud defence industrial base."

"We need to ramp up our defence spending," the Secretary General pointed out. "We are safe now; we are not safe three to five years from now, so we have to spend more. The new spending target is really rooted in facts, in deep study we have done collectively on where the gaps are in our capabilities, and how we have to fill them; the Defence Ministers agreed on that last Thursday; and now it's up to the leaders to agree on the extra spending needed to make that possible," he emphasised.

Secretary General Rutte also underscored the urgency to boost defence industrial production. "We have fantastic industrial companies in the US, all over Europe and Canada, but they are not producing at speeds. So we need more shifts, more production lines," he underscored.

Finally, the NATO Secretary General reiterated the importance of long-term support to Ukraine. "We need to make sure that Ukraine is in the best possible position to one, [sustain] the ongoing conflict with Russia, [following] the unprovoked Russian aggression against Ukraine, but also to be in the best possible position when a long term cease-fire/a peace deal arises, to make sure that Putin will never, ever try this again," he said.