“NATO’s main task is to make sure that this health crisis does not become a security crisis. And that is exactly what we do,” said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the European Parliament’s committee on Foreign Affairs and sub-committee on Security and Defence.

“While our attention has rightly been focused on fighting the pandemic, our security threats have not gone away, just the opposite. Existing trends and tensions have accelerated; Russia’s destabilising behaviour, brutal forms of terrorism, sophisticated cyber-attacks, disruptive technologies, the rise of China and the security impacts of climate change,” he also said.

We all know that more than 90 percent of the EU citizens live in countries that are NATO Allies. At the same time, EU Member States provide only 20 percent of NATO’s defence spending. As members of the European Parliament, you can help push for more ambitious and practical cooperation between NATO and the European Union,” he pushed the MEPs who were present at the meeting.

It was the first meeting at the presence of the new Chair of the Delegation of the European Parliament for relations with the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, Tom Vandenkendelaere (Belgium, EPP).

Watch the full debate here: