<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>Foreign Affairs Minister José Manuel Albares advocated this Friday for “greater interoperability” between European militaries and “a more interconnected and more operational command and chain of command” to achieve “greater autonomy and European sovereignty in matters of security.”</strong></h4> Speaking to the press upon his arrival for the second day of the NATO ministerial meeting in Brussels, Albares warned that, in addition to the Russian aggression against Ukraine, Europe faces “many other” security challenges, such as cybersecurity, the functioning of hospitals, the integrity of the electoral system, disinformation, the integrity of the single market, and the fight against terrorism. “Against all of this and in the face of all of this, we need unity: unity among NATO Allies and unity among European partners, the European Union, and NATO,” because “greater European security, greater autonomy, and greater European sovereignty in matters of security also means a stronger NATO,” he warned. "To achieve this, we Europeans—and I expressed this yesterday and will express it again—must equip ourselves with greater capabilities, greater interoperability between our militaries, and also a more interconnected and operational command and chain of command," he added. Furthermore, he warned, "we must better integrate our defense industries, and this inevitably leads to a rethinking of European financing for everything that affects our security." "It is important that all of this continues to be done within the values of the European project that Spain will always defend," he added. On the first day of the ministerial meeting, held this Thursday, Albares assured that the government's commitment to increasing defense spending to two percent of GDP will be within "the metrics that have been in place up to now" and specified that there has been "no request from Spain or anyone else" to change them. “The metrics are known, Spain abides by them, and our commitment to the two percent target is based on the metrics that have been in place so far,” he declared on Thursday, and reiterated this Friday in response to reporters. Increasing defense spending is one of the major topics at the NATO foreign ministers' meeting. Several allied countries have proposed moving closer to the two percent target before the next NATO Summit, which will take place at the end of June in The Hague, where this bar will likely be raised by one point, from two to three percent. In this context, the Spanish government has raised the possibility of including the fight against terrorism, cybersecurity, and border defense within NATO's spending metrics. However, the organization's Secretary General, Mark Rutte, assured this Thursday, also upon his arrival at the meeting, that the Alliance has no intention of redefining defense spending. “We have a clear definition of what defense spending is and we don't want to dilute it; we are strict about that,” he declared.
