Archive photo: NATO flag outside the Military Club in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, September 5, 2011, alongside Bulgarian and European Union flags. Brejnev / CC0. Cropped and resized.
NATO is reducing its schedule of high-level meetings, with no defense ministers’ meeting planned for October 2027 and one foreign ministers’ meeting scheduled next year instead of two, according to a new Associated Press report describing the alliance’s reorganization package.
Secretary-General Mark Rutte told AP in an interview that NATO would bring national leaders together when there was a need, rather than treating summits as a fixed annual requirement. The report did not specify when the interview took place or when the package was agreed.
“We have summits when we need them,” Rutte said.
The plans leave Albania without a leaders’ summit in 2027. Prime Minister Edi Rama said on Thursday, November 12, that allies had not reached a common position on the timing, but that a summit would not take place there next year. If one is held in 2028, he said, it will be in Tirana.
That is not a confirmed 2028 date. Rutte had named Albania as the next host after this year’s gathering in Ankara without specifying a year, according to the earlier Reuters account of Rama’s comments.
Defense ministers normally meet in October, but no such talks took place last month, AP reported. The reduced schedule concerns those ministerial meetings and the timing of leaders’ summits, rather than the cancellation of all NATO meetings.
Large summits also take time and money to organize. Rutte noted the security demands of bringing together the alliance’s 32 members and partner countries. Asked by AP whether such gatherings were worth that effort, he said they were.
JBizNews Desk | Brussels
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