Madrid (EFE) the accession of this country to the Alliance.
After participating last night in the face-to-face debate with the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, for the general elections on July 23, Sánchez traveled to Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, early in the morning to participate in the NATO summit sessions.
Accession to NATO, the topic to be discussed
An appointment in which he will reiterate the need to continue maintaining support for Ukraine until the end of the Russian invasion, whose president, Volodímir Zelenksi, will meet in person with the NATO heads of state and government.
Ukraine wants to join NATO, although it recognizes the difficulty that the current situation entails, and the organization’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said on Monday that the allies are studying reducing this process from two to a single step, so the The Ukrainian government would not have to participate in a multi-year program to demonstrate that it has carried out the necessary military, economic and political reforms to join the military alliance.
For now, the president of the United States, Joe Biden, has indicated that Ukraine is not ready for accession because of the war but also that it must meet other requirements such as greater democratization.
Spain considers that it is not yet the propitious moment
Along these lines, government sources emphasize that Spain is in favor of NATO’s open-door policy but consider that, with a war, it is not the most propitious moment to set a specific date.
At the Lithuanian summit, it is expected to approve more military aid to Ukraine and increase the political relationship between NATO and kyiv.
Another closer adhesion will be discussed at the summit, that of Sweden, after Stoltenberg announced on Monday that Turkey was lifting its veto for the incorporation of Sweden after a meeting with the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the Swedish prime minister, Ulf Kristerson.
Sánchez will reiterate Spain’s commitment to reach 2% of GDP allocated to defense spending by 2029, but emphasizing that the contribution of a country to the Alliance must be measured not only by that percentage but by all the contributions of each state to collective security.
Spain’s military spending
According to data made public this week by NATO, Spain will allocate 1.26% of its GDP to military spending in 2023, which places it as the third country that invests the least in defense in relative terms, only behind Belgium and Luxembourg.
The Government is confident that the Vilnius summit, which it considers to be a continuation of the one held last year in Madrid, will agree on a clear strategy to deal with the instability and threats posed by the Sahel.
Sánchez will meet again at an international summit with the president of the United States, Joe Biden, with whom he met at the White House on May 12.
It is foreseeable that during the course of the meeting there will be some conversation between the two, although there is no official bilateral meeting planned.
Sixth NATO summit for Sánchez
The one in Vilnius is the sixth summit of the Alliance attended by the President of the Government, who attended for the first time the one that was held in 2018 in Brussels.
The following year he was present at Watford (United Kingdom), and in 2020 there was no due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Brussels once again hosted that of 2021 and that of an extraordinary nature that was convened in March 2022 due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The last one so far in which Sánchez participated was the one he hosted, in Madrid, in June of last year.
Spain will directly participate in the security of the Vilnius summit, since a battery of Nasams anti-aircraft missiles, which is deployed in Latvia, will defend the skies over Lithuania during the Alliance leaders’ meeting.