Joint press statements

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte:

Prime Minister, dear Luís, thank you for your warm welcome. Obrigado.

It's a pleasure to be in Lisbon. Portugal, as you know, is a founding member of NATO and provides essential contributions to our transatlantic security. Today, we discussed the security situation in Europe. Russia is trying to destabilize our countries and is challenging the resilience of our societies with acts ranging from assassination attempts, to cyber-attacks, to sabotage. And Russia continues to wage a brutal war of aggression against Ukraine.

NATO supports Ukraine, and it is vital that we continue to do so. Portugal has played a crucial role in this, including with demining, training, through your role in the F-16 coalition. And with a new military million euro pledge to the Comprehensive Assistance Package. We must do all we can to support Ukraine, so that when they decide to go to the negotiating table, they can do it from a position of strength. I also thank you for Portugal's significant contribution to innovation in the maritime domain.

Your Maritime Operational Experimentation Centre helps Allies test and exercise with new technologies, including to improve the resilience of our energy and communications' infrastructure. And this is vital. Just yesterday, we saw another incident in the Baltic Sea with disruption to a cable connecting Latvia and Sweden. The good news is through activity Baltic Sentry, NATO ships and aircrafts are operating alongside our Allies over there, enabling a fast, coordinated response. NATO is strong today.

To keep NATO strong, we must, however, continue to adapt. And to guarantee our security in the future we also need to ramp up our efforts now. That also means we need to spend more on our defence, and I welcome the recent increases in Portugal's defence spending, but we also know that the goal of 2%, now set a decade ago, will not be enough to meet the challenges of tomorrow.

The threats from Russia may seem distant, but let me assure you, it is not. Russian ships and long range bombers menace the Portuguese coast. Portugal's vital undersea infrastructure is squarely in Russia’s sights. And while we deal with the Russian threat, we must also address the challenges coming from the southern neighbourhood, and also the opportunities coming from the southern neighbourhood.

I would like to thank you, Luís, for Portugal's important role in shaping our southern neighbourhood agenda, all Allies need to step up so that our Alliance remains safe, not only today, but also in the years to come.

Prime Minister Montenegro, dear Luís, thank you again for your personal commitment, our friendship, but particularly for  everything you are doing to keep our Transatlantic Alliance strong. I look forward to our continued cooperation. Thank you so much.