Developing defence capabilities and taking stock of the accomplishment of defence tasks which were agreed at the Chicago NATO Summit in last May are the main focus of the NATO defence ministerial meeting held in Brussels on February 21–22.

Hungary is represented at the meeting by Minister of Defence Csaba Hende. The economic crisis and the resulting cuts in many member states’ defence budgets leave their mark on the debates over the defence package within the North Atlantic Alliance. Earlier, the United States had already spent on military goals to a considerably greater proportion than the average of the European allies, but recently this gap has widened further. Hungary has already informed NATO that it can undertake not to decrease the proportion of defence spending – which is currently somewhat less than 1 per cent – in this year’s and next year’s budgets, and to increase it after 2014 by an annual 0.1 per cent. It is hoped that in this way the 1.4 per cent will be reached again in the medium term.

To some extent, the expiry of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)’s mandate at the end of next year in Afghanistan will lead to a new situation in NATO’s finances. The international community will not let down the Central Asian state after 2015, but the tasks of training, advising and mentoring will cost several orders of magnitude less than keeping the combat units in Afghanistan. Thus the question arises whether the member states are willing to reinvest some of the released sums for the purposes of defence. On Friday, the ministers will discuss in detail the planned withdrawal of ISAF.

On Friday the officials are to meet the Ukrainian defence minister, which is going to be the first NATO-Ukraine meeting on this level since the summer of 2010. NATO is striving to achieve the best possible cooperation with Ukraine, despite the fact that Kijev clearly stated it no longer aspires to NATO membership, contrary to the intentions announced by the previous Ukrainian government. Ukraine is present with 164 troops in the NATO-led KFOR mission in Kosovo, and it has also indicated its interest to participate in the post-2014 training project in Afghanistan, which is currently taking shape. In the second half of this year, Ukraine intends to contribute a frigate for several months to the efforts of the NATO-led Operation Ocean Shield, which is part of the anti-piracy campaign off the coast of the Horn of Africa.

(honvedelem.hu; MTI)