German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) views the NATO summit in Ankara as a turning point in the alliance's history. "The free-riding of the Europeans is now simply over," Merz said on Wednesday after the meeting in Ankara, pointing to the higher defense spending of the European NATO countries. Following the summit in Turkey, he said, the alliance is "more European than ever."
The Europeans are taking on more responsibility within the alliance, the chancellor said. "We are freeing ourselves from one-sided dependencies, and that serves our security," he added, referring to the previous imbalance between the US and the other NATO partners in defense spending and military capabilities.
He said he was returning to Germany with the feeling "that we have made a major contribution to NATO staying together, to it becoming stronger, to it becoming more European." There was currently "new momentum" on the European side, he said.
The NATO summit in Ankara addressed, among other things, a shift in burden-sharing. The United States has long called on the other allies to take on more responsibility for their own defense.
Before the meeting of the North Atlantic Council on Wednesday morning, US President Donald Trump had expressed himself as "very angry" with the allies in the presence of NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. He cited, among other reasons, the comparatively much higher US defense spending and what he considered insufficient support from NATO partners for the US in the Iran war.
Merz said that the US president had acknowledged the allies' efforts during the meeting of the North Atlantic Council. At the same time, he said, "critical points" remained, along with an "imbalance between the defense efforts of the US and the 31 other member states."
Appeals from previous US presidents to the other NATO partners had "fallen on deaf ears," Merz said. Trump was now saying, "somewhat unkindly," that enough was enough. "I can't blame him for that," the chancellor said. At the summit, "nobody questioned NATO's fundamental mission and its fundamental cohesion," Merz said. Being able to state this "on a day like today was not a given from the outset."
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