NATO member states are likely to remain in the Baltic region until 2020, said Polish President Andrzej Duda at an Alliance summit in Brussels.
He said that Alliance members confirmed their commitment to the Warsaw Summit agenda of continuing securing Central and Eastern Europe.
Duda said on Thursday that there were no objections from the Alliance member countries about the strengthening of NATO’s eastern flank.
At the Warsaw summit last year, NATO members agreed to strengthen the Alliance’s eastern flank, including in Poland, in light of Russian aggression just beyond the borders of the European Union.
Duda said on Thursday that NATO allies had agreed to retain an enhanced presence in the Baltic region over the coming years.
Asked if this presence would continue into 2018, Duda said: “We should be talking about 2022 rather than 2018… No one raised the issue of a pullout”.
He added that he did not think that there will be a decrease in “mutual support” and a “withdrawal of troops from the Baltic states, Poland and Romania”.
He added that plans and strategies to increase defense spending to 2.2 percent of GDP by 2020 and 2.5 percent of GDP by 2030 were presented to NATO and had been discussed with Polish Deputy Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.
(thenews.pl)
