Live: NATO allies agree on collective defence commitment

Here’s what has taken place at the NATO summit so far:

• US President Donald Trump and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte held a news conference before the NATO summit, addressing several issues, including the recent Israel-Iran ceasefire and NATO’s defence spending target.
• Rutte told reporters that NATO will reach a unanimous decision for member countries to raise defence spending to 5 percent of GDP.
• German Chancellor Friedrich Merz expressed confidence that NATO members will agree “in great harmony” to raise the alliance’s defence spending target. However, some nations have said they will not meet this target.
• President Trump said he believes “great progress” is being made towards ending Israel’s war in Gaza, adding that US envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff informed him a ceasefire deal is “near”.
• Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban told reporters he does not believe that Russia could launch an attack on NATO territory by the end of the decade.

US President Donald Trump will meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the NATO summit.

“We’ll discuss the obvious,” Trump said. “We’ll discuss his difficulties.”

Trump described Zelenskyy, with whom he famously had a dispute with at the White House in February, as a “nice guy”.

The two leaders were supposed to meet at the Group of Seven summit in Canada earlier this month, but Trump departed for Washington early to deal with the conflict between Israel and Iran.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz says he’s confident NATO members will decide on an increase in defence spending because they are convinced that the threat level has changed.

Merz, arriving at the summit, said he believes the decision to raise the alliance’s spending target to a cumulative 5 percent of GDP will be made “in great harmony”.

He said allies agree that “the threat situation has changed, and the threat is Russia in particular.”

Merz added: “I want to say expressly that we are making the decisions we are making not to do anyone a favor, but we are making these decisions out of … our own conviction that NATO as a whole, and this regards the European part of NATO above all, must do more in the coming years to secure its own defence capability.”

Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban does not believe, as other European countries do, that Russia could carry out an attack on NATO territory by the end of the decade.

“I think Russia is not strong enough to represent a real threat to us. We are far stronger,” Orban told reporters at the summit.

Orban is considered Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest ally in Europe.

Here’s more from Kallas, the vice president of the European Commission, who spoke with Al Jazeera on the sidelines:

• We need to sit down with Iran and discuss and agree on its nuclear programme, but we also have other issues with Iran when it comes to Europe. We have their support for Russia, their detention of European citizens and also their cyber- and hybrid attacks against European countries.
• It is very clear that Iran should never develop a nuclear weapon.
• On Monday, we had the meeting of foreign ministers of the European Union, with experts on human rights showing that Israel is in breach of Article 2 of the association’s agreement on human rights.
• This summit has a clear goal, which is to get the agreement on this 3.5 percent or 5 percent of the defence spending, because we are living in a security situation that is more dangerous for everybody. We all need to do more. The stronger Europe is, the stronger NATO also.

Earlier, Trump said “great progress” is being made, referring to a possible deal to end the conflict. Here are some more of his comments on Gaza:

“I think we’re going to have some very good news,” he said in the Netherlands. “I was talking to Steve Witkoff, who, by the way, is terrific, and who knows more about this subject than anybody … He just explains it so easily. He’s really very knowledgeable. But he did tell me that [a ceasefire deal in] Gaza is very close,” he said, referring to the US special envoy to the Middle East.

The European Commission has been in contact with Israel to improve the situation on the ground in Gaza, says Kaja Kallas, the EU’s vice president.

Kallas told Al Jazeera that the bloc is reviewing how to get more aid into the besieged enclave.

“What we already did [and will do] is to really contact Israel and put the pressure, so that the situation is improved on the ground for the people of Palestine, that the humanitarian aid would get in,” Kallas said.

“We had our two mandates of our missions renewed when it comes to border crossing and how we can [get] more aid in to actually help the people on the ground.”

NATO will decide unanimously for countries to raise defence spending to 5 percent of GDP, Mark Rutte, the chief of the military alliance, has told reporters.

Rutte added Europeans and Canadians would need to pay more for defence, not US taxpayers.

The defence spending increase has been contested by countries like Spain, Belgium and Slovakia, as we have been reporting.

Trump says he believes that “great progress” is being made to bring an end to Israel’s war in Gaza.

“I think great progress is being made on Gaza, I think because of this attack that we made [on Iran],” said Trump, suggesting the US strikes on Iran could have a positive effect.

When asked if he believed that the attacks on the Iranian nuclear sites would lead to the release of the Israeli captives held in Gaza, he said he believes it has “helped a little bit”, adding that “even before this, we were very close to making a deal on Gaza”.

Before the summit, activists from the organisation Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25) held a counter-event on June 21 and 22, calling it NATO Counter Summit (Tegentop) in The Hague.

Guest speakers promoted the idea that “NATO must not be given the power to influence Europe’s decisions”, a DiEM25 press release stated.

“We must condemn and refuse participation in such a barbaric method of negotiations and refuse the spilling of our children’s blood in the name of peacekeeping and maintaining global balance!” Lucille Cornelius, the spokesperson for DiEM25 in the Netherlands, said in a panel discussion during the event.

She also condemned NATO’s proposed defence spending target.

“If our governments do not divest from NATO and its demands and from the USA’s militarisation, we the people need to embark on a continental strike, so that our money is not used for the dismembering of children or leaving babies in incubators to die from starvation and be eaten by dogs.

“This is what the world will continue to look like unless the war machine grinds to a permanent halt,” DiEM25 stated in their release.

 

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In his remarks before the NATO summit, the US president touched upon his request for NATO members to meet spending targets and the attacks on Iranian nuclear bases.

Intelligence following the strikes in Iran was “inconclusive”, he said. “The intelligence says we don’t know. It could’ve been very severe. That’s what the intelligence suggests.”

“It was very severe. There was obliteration,” he added.

Asked if the US would strike again if Iran rebuilt its nuclear enrichment programme, he said, “Sure.”

Belgium has also signalled that it will not reach NATO’s defence spending target of 5 percent of GDP.

PM Bart De Wever stated that increasing to 3.5 percent is more realistic.

“I think 3.5 [percent] in 10 years’ time is a realistic objective. It won’t be easy to get there, but it is what NATO has decided as necessary,” he told reporters, adding that if capability targets can be met with less, as Spain is planning, Belgium may follow suit.

If NATO says it takes 3.5 percent, “it’s probably true,” he said.

Spain has announced that it would not be able to reach NATO’s proposed defence spending target of 5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) target by the new 2035 deadline, calling it “unreasonable”.

However, Madrid does not expect any repercussions from its decision.

“Spain will be a responsible ally,” Economy Minister Carlos Cuerpo told Bloomberg TV, adding that Spain would still meet all of its commitments on its military capabilities.

“No repercussions should derive from making good on our commitments and from being a reliable NATO ally, covering for the capabilities that we did commit to and that are necessary to defend NATO.”

On Sunday, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said Spain would not spend more than 2.1 percent of its GDP on defence, because its commitments towards NATO on its military capabilities did not require more.

Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the NATO summit in the Netherlands, set against the backdrop of the continuing Russia-Ukraine war and soaring tensions in the Middle East.

The bloc is expected to agree upon a new defence spending target of 5 percent of gross domestic product – however, objections to this persist.

Stay with us for the latest updates, reactions and analysis.