Opposition and Coalition Concur on Need to Hike Defence Spending (2)

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 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 can 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. Sutaj Estok agrees that it's necessary to make larger investments in the military, which has been built for the times of peace. He also supports the dual-use projects. "These are hospitals, roads, bridges, it's the protection of cyber space, the protection of crisis critical infrastructure - hence all the expenditure you need not only at the time of war but also peace," he said, adding that the money should go to projects with a potential to help the inhabitants in the regions. Leaders of the three opposition parties concurred that the security environment in Europe has been changing and European countries should engage in closer cooperation. "It's important that for the time being we stay in the NATO platform for as long as possible. But it's necessary to raise a question of what would happen if the United States withdraw from NATO. In this case it's necessary and of paramount importance to build a strong security mechanism of European countries, which we want to be part of as the Slovak Republic," stated head of KDH Milan Majersky. PS leader Michal Simecka finds it important for Slovakia to maintain strong ties and partnerships with its European partner countries and criticised the Government in this context over its rhetoric against the European allies. SaS chair Branislav Groehling asked President Pellegrini to assume the entirety of the task of representing Slovakia abroad. KDH and SaS are in agreement that defence spending of Slovakia shouldn't go up until other NATO countries meet their commitment to spend 2 percent of GDP. The two parties concurred with PS that it's necessary to draft a development plan for the Slovak Armed Forces, and the opposition should participate in it as well, seeing as this is an issue transcending a single election cycle. The opposition also proposed the forming of a committee to supervise the defence spending. Majersky confirmed that both the coalition and opposition agreed that they don't support the sending of Slovak soldiers to Ukraine. mf