Opening remarks

by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Defence Ministers Session

  • 24 Jun. 2015
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  • Last updated: 24 Jun. 2015 14:50

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome.

We face a fundamental change in our security environment, so NATO has to make a fundamental adaptation.

We have already made significant progress towards implementing what we decided at our Wales summit last year. First and foremost, the Readiness Action Plan. 

Our interim Spearhead Force is now operational. Seven nations have volunteered to lead this force. And we are setting up a network of six small headquarters across the eastern part of our Alliance.  

Today, we will take further important steps.

We will further enhance the NATO Response Force.

We will speed up decision making, while maintaining political control.

And we will improve our advance planning and logistics, so we can respond even faster and more effectively to any challenge to our security.    

Of course, our efforts to adapt the Alliance must be funded.  So we will review progress made in implementing the Defence Investment Pledge we made at our summit in Wales.

There are encouraging signs. But we need to do more.

So we need to redouble our efforts as we prepare for our next summit in Warsaw.    

Let me now conclude this public part of the meeting, and thank the members of the media who have joined us for the start of this session. Thank you.