Johnson warns NATO allies to prepare for 'a more dangerous decade'

MADRID, 29 Jun. (EUROPA PRESS) -

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned NATO allies on Wednesday that they must "prepare for a more dangerous decade," urging them to "invest more" to modernize defense and "restore deterrence." in Europe.

Within the Atlantic Alliance Summit being held in Madrid this week, Johnson has asked the Member States to commit to providing the "necessary resources" to comply with NATO's "new Strategic Concept", which is falls within a "dangerous" environment due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

"The NATO Alliance keeps our people safe every day. But over the next ten years, the threats around us are only going to grow. We need allies, all allies, to deepen and restore deterrence and ensure defense." in the next decade," the British president said in a statement shared by Downing Street.

The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has defended that the objective of reaching two percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in investment in defense must be a base and "not a ceiling", for which he has asked the allies to increase their spending "in this moment of crisis".

In this sense, Downing Street has announced that the country's defense spending will reach 2.3 percent of GDP by 2022, a milestone that the Executive has described as "the largest increase in defense spending in the United Kingdom since the Cold War ".

Likewise, Johnson welcomed the fact that the United Kingdom is "the only European country" to meet the 2 percent defense spending target since the member states of the Atlantic Alliance agreed at the Wales Summit in 2014 to reach that figure in a maximum period of ten years.