NATO Defence Ministers to take forward decisions on terrorism and burden sharing

Ahead of the meeting, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced that defence spending across the Alliance is expected to grow by 4.3% in 2017. “That is three consecutive years of accelerating defence spending. This means, over the last three years, European Allies and Canada spent almost 46 billion US dollars more on defence," he said.

To help combat terrorism, NATO is now fully integrated into the information-sharing and decision-making structures of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS. “We have already stepped up our support with more flight-time and information sharing by our AWACS surveillance aircraft," said Mr. Stoltenberg. At NATO Headquarters, a new Hybrid Branch and a Terrorism Intelligence Cell are operational and NATO Deputy Secretary General Rose Gottemoeller will coordinate the Alliance’s anti-terrorism efforts.

Tomorrow, the Secretary General will also present a progress report on NATO-EU cooperation to ministers. This sets out how NATO and the EU are stepping up cooperation on issues ranging from resilience to hybrid threats. Defence ministers will also discuss the path forward in Afghanistan, including future troop levels.