NATO Countries to Hold Meeting in Early April – Agenda Not Disclosed

NATO foreign ministers will meet on 3-4 April at the Alliance's headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, the organisation's press service reports.  

The meeting will be chaired by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. ‘A detailed agenda for the meeting of NATO foreign ministers will be available on the NATO website closer to the event,’ the statement said.  

This will be the first meeting of NATO foreign ministers since Donald Trump took office as US president. New US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is expected to attend.  

The meeting will precede the NATO leaders' summit to be held in late June in The Hague, the Netherlands.  

Earlier, Trump called on NATO member states to increase defence spending to 5% of GDP.  

Lithuania and Estonia were the first among the allies to agree to this demand and declared their readiness to allocate more than 5% of GDP to defence.  

On 19 February, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen announced an increase in the country's defence budget for 2025-2026 in response to threats from ‘aggressive Russia’.  

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski also confirmed that the country will spend 5% of GDP on defence in 2025.  

In 2024, the total defence spending of European NATO member states amounted to USD 380 billion, which for the first time corresponds to 2% of their total GDP.

As The Gaze reported, in February, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte named two main conditions necessary to ensure Ukraine's security after a possible peace deal with Russia.

The first condition is to ensure that Ukraine has the best possible position in negotiations to end the war. The second is to ensure that the agreement is strong enough to prevent Russia from attacking Ukraine again in the future.