20 June 2024, Thursday, 19:40 810

NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg resigning. He will be replaced by Prime Minister of the Netherlands - Politico

Editor: Tetiana Herasimova

Читати українською

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The Prime Minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutte will become the next Secretary General of NATO after the approval of his candidacy by all 32 members of the alliance. He will replace Jens Stoltenberg in this position.

It was reported by Politico on Thursday, June 20.

Following approval from Hungary and Slovakia, Romania confirmed its support for Rutte, and Romanian President Klaus Iohannis withdrew his candidacy for the post of NATO chairman. Rutte's approval also means that the question of succession of the NATO secretary general will be decided by July, when leaders celebrate the alliance's 75th anniversary in Washington. The publication noted that Rutte's selection was a long process, due to which Stoltenberg's term of office was extended four times.

“I’m very confident that the alliance will find a good successor,” Stoltenberg told Politico last week.

Since November of last year, the Prime Minister of the Netherlands sought to take a new position. However, Rutte failed to bring Dutch defense spending to two percent of GDP during his 14-year premiership of the EU's fifth-largest economy. According to the latest NATO data, the Netherlands will reach this figure this year.

As the Ukrainian News agency earlier reported, on June 17, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stated that the Alliance is negotiating the deployment of more nuclear weapons due to the threat from the aggressor states of russia and China.

On June 15, Stoltenberg said that he hoped for an active role of France in NATO.

Recall that on May 10, the United Kingdom called on NATO allies to establish new defense spending of 2.5% of GDP.