Opposition and Coalition Concur on Need to Hike Defence Spending

Bratislava, March 26 (TASR) - Opposition's PS, SaS and KDH parties concur that the EU must assume more responsibility for its own defence and Slovakia should be part of the effort, with all parties conceding that increased defence spending will become a necessity in the future, with this view held also by coalition representatives, Defence Minister Robert Kalinak (Smer-SD) and Interior Minister and Voice-SD leader Matus Sutaj Estok, it follows from stances of party leaders after a roundtable talks initiated by President Peter Pellegrini on security on Wednesday. Kalinak perceives that there is understanding across the political spectrum on the need to improve defence with greater funding, and he has an ambition to present precisely to what purpose the money should go "so it becomes clear what precisely we will buy and carry out". Kalinak underlined the importance of dual-purpose projects and called the NATO summit in the Hague a milestone event of cardinal importance. He intimated that he might imagine a gradual increase in Slovakia's defence spending up to 3 percent of GDP and finds the sending of Slovak troops to peacekeeping missions in Ukraine as politically unfeasible. In his view, such deployment would weaken Slovakia's own defence as a neighbour of Ukraine. mf