The president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, urged the European Union Saturday to rely less on U.S. defense for protection.
Juncker told an Austrian newspaper that he’s satisfied with many things the EU is working on, but that the time has come for Europe to become more independent with its defense.
“It becomes clear that we cannot, in the long-term, rely on American defense support,” Juncker told Tiroler Tageszeitung.
The EU launched a military headquarters in June in Brussels to coordinate training and certain missions. Several countries have further increased their defense budgets after repeated criticism from President Donald Trump.
NATO announced in June that the alliance has seen a cumulative increase of $46 billion in defense spending since 2014, when the 2 percent of gross domestic product target was agreed upon.
The alliance estimates that Canada and European allies will increase defense spending by 4.3 percent in 2017.
“To keep our nations safe, we need to keep working to increase defense spending and fairer burden-sharing across our alliance,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said at a news conference in June. “After years of decline, in 2015 we saw a real increase in defense spending across European allies and Canada … this year, we foresee an even greater real increase of 4.3 percent.”
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