<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, has warned that “the new postulates of the US administration” regarding Ukraine and the possible residual role of the EU in peace negotiations with Russia “force us to rethink and update European security”.</strong></h4> “We must not waste time speculating on why they do these things or understand their strategy”, declared Albares last night in an interview with Cadena SER, in reference to the decision of the US president, Donald Trump, to start direct negotiations with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to end the war and to exclude Europe and Ukraine itself from these peace negotiations. “Energy must be put into continuing to support Ukraine in the fight for its sovereignty and freedom”, continued Albares from Johannesburg, where he is attending the first ministerial meeting of the G20 of the South African presidency. “Europe always moves forward in times of crisis, that is when we discover the needs we have,” the minister recalled. “We have been talking for years about moving towards a European army, mutualising the defence market, retaining part of the production of food and medicines... It is time to do this and not continue theorising, but to take steps,” he warned. Asked whether Spain is going to speed up its increase in investment in Defence, Albares recalled that “there is a target for spending on Defence, which is two per cent, and there is a horizon, which is 2029.” “From there, we should not act as if this were a contest to see who can say the highest number,” because “a percentage of spending 'per se' does not imply anything,” he continued. “We Europeans should analyse what threats exist for Europe,” declared the minister. “One of them is the Russian aggression against Ukraine, which has to do with Defence,” and, in that field, “we will have to quantify how much it is, and we Europeans have to decide that autonomously,” he added. On the other hand, Albares warned that “the expenditure that is above the two percent to which we have committed, we will have to see how to finance it”, because “increasing one point of GDP, going from two to three percent”, and much less reaching five percent, which “no NATO State reaches”, is “simply unattainable with the national budget”. “But if we decide that it is necessary to make that effort, as we decided one day in the face of COVID that an effort had to be made to save our companies and manufacture our vaccines, in that case, the answer is in Brussels”, he insisted. “It is not about magically throwing percentages, first let us analyse the threat and see what response it requires” and, in that context, “the new postulates of the US administration force us to rethink and update European security”, he warned.
