European Parliament President Roberta Metsola has said Europe should step up its defence spending following a meeting with the head of NATO.
In a Facebook post on Monday evening following “important discussions” with NATO secretary general Mark Rutte, Metsola said: “At this critical moment in history, Europe must invest more on defence."
“What matters now is not what we say, but what we do... It’s time to walk the talk, and our commitment needs to match the level of threat we are facing”, she said, seemingly in reference to Russia.
“That is how we can guarantee safety and security for our people.”
The EP president said peace in Ukraine had featured at the top of agenda in her meeting with Rutte, stressing the coming weeks would shape the future of the continent.
NATO, or the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, is a military alliance of 32 countries – originally 12, including the USA, UK and France – set up in the aftermath of World War II to counter the threat of the Soviet Union.
While the US has long been an integral part of the alliance and the dominant military contributor to NATO, its future role in the organisation has recently been cast into doubt.
US President Donald Trump has consistently criticised European countries in the alliance for not spending more on defence and threatened to pull the US out of the organisation in response.
Last month, Prime Minister Robert Abela said Malta should reconsider how it interpreted its neutrality, suggesting the country should look to increase defence spending to meet “today’s realities”.
While Malta is not a NATO member, it has signed up to its Partnership for Peace programme and the alliance’s Individually Tailored Partnership Programmes (ITPP) – “the main tool that NATO uses to coordinate its cooperation with partners”, according to the organisation’s website.
Spending row
In January, Trump called for European members to raise defence spending to five per cent, accusing America’s European allies of being “in for a tiny fraction of the money that we're in... Why are we in for billions and billions of dollars more money than Europe?"
And in an interview in December, he said there was “absolutely" the possibility of the US departing the organisation if defence spending did not increase.
Rutte has also indicated his desire to see European countries increase their defence spending; he told the BBC last year European countries needed to spend "considerably more than 3%".
And while joining NATO has long been an aim of Ukraine in the hope it will guarantee long-term security, Trump’s defence chief Pete Hegseth has rebutted the idea, saying last month it was not realistic.
"The United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement", he said.
"Safeguarding European security must be an imperative for European members of NATO," Hegseth said. "Europe must provide the overwhelming share of future lethal and non-lethal aid to Ukraine."