From the correspondent in The Hague
At the end of the NATO summit in which the new 5% spending targets for Defense by 2035 were approved, Giorgia Meloni claims the “necessity” and “sustainability” of the investments refuting the League of Matteo Salvini who on Wednesday morning, through the voice of the economic head Albergo Bagnai , had argued that the new objectives were “unsustainable”. During the press briefing with journalists at the end of the NATO summit in The Hague, Meloni also made it clear that she wanted to respect the commitments on military spending while considering the negotiations on tariffs as “two sides of the same coin” of the relationship between Italy and the United States.
On the subject of military spending and the new targets that would entail spending an additional 70 billion a year on Defense between now and 2035, the Prime Minister explained that not even “one euro” will be “distracted” from the priorities of Italians. To those who asked her, as the opposition did, if Italy should not have followed Spain in a request for greater flexibility, Meloni replied: “We did as they did, we signed the same document. I have not seen any particularly polemical interventions…”.
The Italian prime minister also contradicted her League allies on the 5% for military spending. On Wednesday morning, the Northern League's head of economics Alberto Bagnai, speaking on Coffee Break on La7, had defined the 5% target as" currently unattainable and socially unsustainable". When asked specifically, the Italian prime minister explained that she had arrived in The Hague"with a resolution voted by the entire majority : it is a decision that we have taken with full knowledge of the facts, making our assessments, with the Minister of Economy (Lega's Giancarlo Giorgetti, ed. note)".
Unlike the League, Meloni added that she is convinced that the new target"is sustainable due to the size of the expenditure, due to the fact that we are talking about a 10-year commitment, due to the fact that we are talking about a commitment that must be renegotiated in any case in 2029, due to the fact that there are no mandatory annual increases for member states and this also allows choices to be made based on the progress of the situation at that particular moment. Therefore, there is total flexibility", explained the Prime Minister.
The Italian Prime Minister also opened up to the possibility of reaching an agreement with the European Union on tariffs . In particular, before leaving for the European Council in Brussels, she spoke of a pact with Washington on 10% on tariffs:"I am quite in agreement - added Meloni - because it would not have a particularly impactful impact". Not all countries in Brussels agree.
After the Atlantic Council, Meloni took part in an E5 format meeting (France, Germany, Poland, United Kingdom, Italy) with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and in the afternoon she will leave for Brussels to take part in the European Council on Thursday and Friday. On Tuesday evening, the Prime Minister dined alongside US President Donald Trump at a small table with the Dutch royals, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and Turkish President Recep Tayip Erdogan. The two had a long conversation on the situation in the Middle East, sources at Palazzo Chigi said.
