Prague, June 20 (CTK) – The pace of raising the military spending in NATO does not reflect the bad security situation and the Czech Republic is in the last quarter of allied countries in this sphere, Petr Pavel, Czech Chairman of NATO Military Committee, said during his first official visit yesterday.
This morning, Pavel conducted talks with his successor in the post of Czech chief of staff, Josef Becvar.
Pavel himself was chief of staff between 2012 and 2014.
Pavel and Becvar also discussed the forthcoming NATO summit in Warsaw, the offer of the Visegrad Four (the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary) to conduct a joint exercise in the Baltics and Czech missions and training.
They also spoke about the Czech military concept until 2025 and the specific tasks laid on individual NATO countries.
NATO financing was one of the topics. Last week, Pavel criticised European countries for investing too little in their defence.
He said yesterday that although the situation improved over the past year, the pace with which the money flowed still did not reflect the security situation.
There is also the question of where the money is sent and what is gained for it, Pavel said.
There are a number of capabilities in NATO that have to be developed, Pavel said, adding that he expected the Warsaw summit to send an appeal to all NATO members to step up their efforts in the question of financing.
Asked about the Czech Republic’s situation, Pavel said it was in the “last quarter.”
At present, the Czech Republic spends about 1 percent of GDP on its defence, while it pledged to contribute with 2 percent when it joined NATO.
The current coalition government wants to increase the expenditures to 1.4 percent of GDP by 2020.
Becvar told journalists he was glad that in the current complicated security situation, the Czech Republic had its representative in a top NATO post.
Later yesterday, Pavel will conduct talks at the Defence Ministry and will visit Charles University where he will deliver a speech about the future of NATO.
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