Iohannis: We pledge to spend a little more so that we can make NATO even stronger

President Klaus Iohannis declared on Thursday that there is no "conflict" within the North-Atlantic Alliance, highlighting that the allied countries have pledged to spend "a little more" in order to make NATO even stronger. 

"There is no conflict, there are talks and I can say that these matters were brought into discussion by President Trump. President Trump has not initiated a conflict, he has told it as it is. NATO is united, unique, the strongest alliance the World has ever known, but together we pledged to spend a little more so that we can make NATO even stronger," Iohannis said, at NATO headquarters. 

He said that discussions on this topic will most likely continue during next year's summit. 

"At the right time we will be open to a discussion on Defence spending. It is a complicated discussion, given that every sector is demanding money," Iohannis added. 

The President reminded that allied countries have already committed to raise allocations for Defence to 2 percent of their GDP by 2024. 

"We have allies that even today have defence budgets of less than 1 percent of their GDP. Then, with good reason, the matter of what we called the division of tasks or contributions has been intently raised," Iohannis specified. 

The head of state mentioned that in this context, an intense discussion arose within NATO and all leaders have given up on bilateral meetings and there were discussions about money during a special meeting. 

"We have reached optimistic conclusions. Several allies that are still far off from the 2 percent have committed to increasing defence spending, have committed to reaching 2 percent as quickly as possible, I will not go into details because these announcements must be made by each state in its turn. For Romania the announcement is simple - we are at 2 percent and we are maintaining this level. There were discussions, without a decision being made, to try, in the offing, to go further and probably at the next NATO summits we will have an approach which tries to go past this 2 percent level," Iohannis said. 

He highlighted that there is no danger that for the Alliance to partially disband after these discussions. 

On the other hand, the Romanian head of state expressed concern regarding the "hypermilitarization" of Crimea. 

"It is in our vicinity and this concern, I have shared it with our allies, which is why I can say one thing that we say more and more often in NATO: national security, safety, have no price, but for this spending is necessary, so to ensure it one must spend. Security does not come easily," Klaus Iohnanis pointed out. 

The President said that the defence initiative that was forwarded in relation to the Black Sea region was very well received by the allies.