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The best contribution a member country can bring to NATO is to strengthen its defense, said Vice-President of the European Parliament Ioan Mircea Pascu on Friday.
"The best contribution a member country can bring to NATO at the moment is to strengthen its defense as much as possible, not to put additional burdens on the Alliance, because, as a matter of fact, if each of us strengthens our own security the Alliance is stronger," Pascu told a conference.
He mentioned that there is a commercially competitive relationship between NATO members.
"We have a competitive relationship from a commercial point of view, so it was from the very beginning between the two shores of the Atlantic. This competitive relationship has recently intensified, but at the same time we have good cooperation at security and political level, from this point of view, the idea is not to allow these competition issues to interfere with the cooperation in the other field," Pascu said.
He said that the phenomenon of fake news is being practiced everywhere, and hence the need for analytical capacity on the part of all citizens.
"If the saying 'You lied the people with the TV' applied before, this time it's through Facebook and the other social media that the lies spread and there's this idea - if something appeared on social media it must be true. A lot of manipulation can occur here as well, as a rule, two, three elements are kept which are real, so that in case of a check, scanning, it can still be seen that something is real, but the rest is for filler (...) The risks [of fake news, ed.n.] are that we create a false image and make wrong decisions, which will later on be repaid, and maybe that is what it is expected," Pascu said.
Head of Information and Public Relation Directorate with the Ministry of National Defense Constantin Spinu said that next year the "#WeAreNATO" information campaign will continue.
"We intend to continue next year the '#WeAreNATO' campaign, changing a little the angle and focus, we will go to niche events, much more specialized, trying to give young people the chance to debate, explain their point of view and we will organize specific activities such as public debate, essay contests, things that can give substance to the campaign," Spinu said.
In his opinion, the best weapon against propaganda is the truth. "We are trying to provide the citizens of Romania with unhindered access, as fast as possible access to accurate, verified information, which really presents the data on Romania's national security from a military point of view," Spinu said.
The National School of Political and Administrative Studies (SNSPA) organized on Friday, in partnership with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of National Education, the "#WeAreNATO" public information event. The topic of the conference held at SNSPA was "Fake news and the impact of this phenomenon on security and defense."
