Remarks

Thank you so much Secretary Blinken, dear Tony.

Thank you so much for hosting me and my delegation here again and thank you for giving me some basic advice about baseball yesterday.

It was great to throw the first pitch but I think I should focus on politics, not on baseball in the future.

It's great to be here and obviously because this week is an important week for NATO. We have our 75th anniversary Summit here in Washington. So thank you for hosting the Summit and thank you also for your leadership your strong personal commitment to our Alliance.

This Summit will be a Summit where we celebrate the most successful and lasting Alliance in history, but we are going also to make important decisions for the future, on deterrence and defence, on Ukraine and on partnerships in Asia Pacific and of course, none of this would have been possible without the leadership of the United States, of President Biden, of you to ensure we have now 32 Allies agreeing on all these important decisions we will take at the Summit here in Washington.

We will make decisions on Ukraine and I think what we have seen over the last days demonstrates the need to step up our support for Ukraine. We have seen new Russian missile attacks against cities against a child hospital. Many children civilians have been killed and it just demonstrates the brutality of Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine and the importance of supporting Ukraine in upholding the right for self-defence.  

We will do more together on deterrence and defence, Allies are stepping up when it comes to deterrence and defence. 23 Allies are investing more of 2% at least of their GDP on defence. This is twice as many as just four years ago and then we will further strengthen our partnership with the Asia Pacific partners.

This is a busy week. 

And it's great to be in Washington and great to see you again Tony. 

Thank you.