2% for defence reached, important result says Crosetto

(ANSA) – ROME, MAY 15 – Italy has reached the minimum NATO target of spending 2% of its GDP on defence, Defence Minister Guido Crosetto said Thursday saying this was an important result but it was just a point of departure.
“We have done what we promised to do, we have achieved the result and it is already an important thing”, Crosetto said.
“We know very well that this is a starting point,” he added on the sidelines of a ceremony for the change of leadership of the Air Force.
“Our goal is not to achieve a numerical result but to have the capabilities that NATO asks us to give to the Alliance and to have the ability to secure and defend this country.
“Unfortunately,” the minister stressed, “since we come from a very long period in which the resources were not what were needed to reach these objectives, it will take many years to recover the deficit accumulated in the last decades.
“It is not that reaching 2% puts us in a position to be okay and we must recover all the percentages of GDP not invested in the last thirty years that are the ones the Americans reproach us for and that are missing to have a defence like the one we would like to have”. (ANSA).
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