Address by the Secretary General to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in Sofia, Bulgaria on Monday 27 May 2024.

🗣 | NATO Secretary General:

Thank you so much. Good morning to everyone. Prime Minister, Minister, excellencies. President, Szczerba. Michał, it's great to see you again. And it's great to be back in Sofia and to meet with the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. As I've said so many, many times before, for me it is a privilege to meet with parliamentarians across the Alliance and from partner nations, because I know that at the end of the day, it is parliaments that decide what really matters for NATO. The budgets, that commitment to our collective defence. And also parliaments represent the democratic institutions that NATO is established to defend.

So therefore, I always look forward to this opportunity to engage with you, to say some words about where we are at the NATO Headquarters and then to engage in Q&A sessions with parliamentarians from NATO Allies and partner countries.

Thank you so much for inviting me. Thank you for having me here today. And let me start by saying that I have attended these conferences, meetings, of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly now for 10 years. And in all those meetings, Sweden has been a partner nation, but this is now the first time where Sweden is not sitting here as a partner nation, but Sweden is sitting as a full-fledged member of the Alliance. So welcome to Sweden. It's great to see you here. And to be honest, it's great to welcome them as the Secretary General of NATO, but also as a representative from Norway and neighbour country of Sweden, to have now Sweden as a full-fledged member.

So, what I will do today is that I will try to be not too long, so we have time for the Q&A session, but I will go through the preparations for the NATO summit in July, where we will of course celebrate the 75th anniversary of the strongest, the most enduring, the most successful Alliance in history, NATO.
We'll do that in Washington. We will celebrate the 75th anniversary. But we will do that, reflecting the reason why NATO is so successful. And the reason why NATO is the most successful Alliance in history is partly that we have been able to unite despite our differences. But the main reason why NATO is the most successful Alliance in history is that we have been able to change and adapt when the world is changing. And therefore, at this Washington Summit, we have to not only be able to celebrate, but we have to be able to demonstrate that NATO is changing, that NATO is responding, that NATO is adapting, when the world is changing. And now we live in a more dangerous world and therefore NATO to has to respond to that more demanding and difficult security environment we are facing.

And there are three topics, three issues which we will address at the Summit, where we have to make important decisions and where we need to ensure that we are responding to a changing world. And I will briefly go through the three of them and then I'm more than ready to answer questions on those issues, but also on all the other issues that I don't mention and the Q&A afterwards.

The first issue at the Washington Summit and we're working on that as we speak at the NATO Headquarters is deterrence and defence, which is at the core of NATO. Because you have to remember that the main purpose of NATO is not to fight the war. The main purpose of NATO is to prevent war, preserve peace. And we do that by making sure that any potential adversary knows that an attack on one Ally, will trigger the response from the whole Alliance. And by doing that we have been able to prevent any military attack on any NATO Ally for 75 years. So, NATO's purpose is peace, NATO's purpose is to prevent war. And we do that by credible deterrence on defence. And we now have a more aggressive Russia, Russia which is using force against neighbours of NATO -Ukraine, but also, we have seen it against Georgia. We have seen how Russia has forces in Moldova, and how they're threatening other countries. Then of course, we need to do more to strengthen our deterrence and defence.

Transcript continues: https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/op...


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