Why the NATO summit is unique and whether Ukraine can expect good news
This is the first meeting of NATO leaders in US President Donald Trump’s second term.
Read more about the summit’s organisation, its main agenda and whether Ukraine can expect good news from the Netherlands in the article by Sergiy Sydorenko, European Pravda's editor: A million euros a minute: inside NATO’s Hague summit, where success and setbacks meet.
Despite being a NATO founding member, the Netherlands has never hosted a summit before.
The Dutch government has taken the responsibility of safeguarding the Alliance’s leaders very seriously indeed. According to official figures, over half of the national police force – 27,000 officers – have been deployed.
Not all Dutch citizens support the enormous scale of the operation.
Even the security personnel checking journalists at the summit perimeter expressed frustration.
"You know this is the most expensive NATO summit security ever," one officer remarked, glancing around at the screening equipment. "This cost €200 million!"
The Dutch government confirmed that the NATO summit has cost the budget €183.4 million, nearly twice the amount originally projected.
A comparison from the Dutch media outlet AD has gone viral.
"Each minute of the summit costs over a million euros. This is the most expensive meeting in NATO history," it wrote.
The lead-up to the summit was dominated by negotiations over defence spending.
Trump publicly demanded that NATO members commit 5% of their GDP to defence – a dramatic increase from the current benchmark of 2%.
Eventually NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte negotiated a compromise with the US: 3.5% of GDP would go towards traditional defence, while the other 1.5% could count towards "soft security" expenditure such as civilian infrastructure projects.
The US also agreed to a longer timeline: instead of the Europeans having to reach the target within five years (as originally demanded), the final deal extended it to a 10-year period.
Spain became the summit’s biggest holdout.
There were several factors at play here: the geography (not particularly concerned about the Russian threat), the economy, ideology (leftist ideology is generally inclined toward pacifism) and domestic politics (Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is currently in a particularly precarious position).
Sources say Spain was unofficially urged to agree to Trump’s demand even if it had no real intention of fulfilling it.
The breakthrough only came late on Sunday 22 June, when NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte sent Sánchez a letter guaranteeing Spain "the flexibility."
Sánchez promptly published the letter and framed it as a domestic political victory. Spain then lifted its veto, and the summit could move forward.
But the dispute wasn’t resolved, only shelved.
Already two other countries, Belgium and Slovakia, have publicly questioned why Spain should get special treatment. Their message: "What about us? We deserve flexibility too."
In contrast to the complicated relations between NATO members, it can be stated that for Ukraine, only positive news is expected from the summit in The Hague.
And most importantly, the NATO decision will directly foresee and encourage funding for the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Member states will count this funding towards their "defence spending", and that will help them meet their target commitments.