Slovakia is meeting its obligations
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- Date: 24.06.2015
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The implementation of the Alliance’s Readiness Action Plan, the strengthening of collective defence and NATO’s eastern defences, the progress being made in bolstering the NATO Response Force (NRF), and the deployment of NATO’s Spearhead Force – Very High Joint Readiness Task Force (VJTF) dominated the agenda of the NATO defence ministers’ meeting in Brussels. In his response to the NATO defence ministerial, SVK Minister of Defence Martin Glváč said: “Gradually, we’ve been taking realistic steps towards Slovakia contributing to the NATO Response Force, and this is something our members of the Armed Forces have been working on intensely.”
The defence ministers also addressed increasing defence budgets to follow up on the pledge made by Allied leaders at the NATO Wales Summit. In this respect, Martin Glváč reaffirmed Slovakia’s commitment to raise its defence budget up to 1.6 % of GDP by 2020, a figure which accounts for average defence spending across NATO/EU member states.
While in Brussels, Minister Glváč signed the Memorandum of Understanding on the Establishment and Functioning of the Multinational Aviation Training Centre (MATC), a joint project being developed by the Slovak Republic, Czech Republic, Hungary and Croatia. The project aims to establish a multinational aviation training centre in order to provide a wide range of training programmes for helicopter pilots, crews and technical support staff. The training programmes will be delivered by the training facilities of the participating countries.
The lead nation of the MATC project is the Czech Republic, with the remit of coordinating vacancies in the participating countries’ training capacities. The Slovak Republic, as the first country from among the Eastern Allies, will commence replacing its fleet of Mi-17 helicopters with UH-60 Black Hawk utility helicopters as from 2016.
With the signing of an additional signature clause to the FNC, the Slovak Republic signed up to the Framework Nations Concept, an initiative by Germany to reinforce the defence capabilities of NATO/EU member states. On the FNC initiative, Martin Glváč remarked: “It is important to demonstrate our commitment and ability to deal with threats.” He added that Slovakia welcomes the German initiative to unite the European Allies with the intent of cooperating to remove deficiencies within NATO’s priority capabilities.
The defence ministers also addressed increasing defence budgets to follow up on the pledge made by Allied leaders at the NATO Wales Summit. In this respect, Martin Glváč reaffirmed Slovakia’s commitment to raise its defence budget up to 1.6 % of GDP by 2020, a figure which accounts for average defence spending across NATO/EU member states.
While in Brussels, Minister Glváč signed the Memorandum of Understanding on the Establishment and Functioning of the Multinational Aviation Training Centre (MATC), a joint project being developed by the Slovak Republic, Czech Republic, Hungary and Croatia. The project aims to establish a multinational aviation training centre in order to provide a wide range of training programmes for helicopter pilots, crews and technical support staff. The training programmes will be delivered by the training facilities of the participating countries.
The lead nation of the MATC project is the Czech Republic, with the remit of coordinating vacancies in the participating countries’ training capacities. The Slovak Republic, as the first country from among the Eastern Allies, will commence replacing its fleet of Mi-17 helicopters with UH-60 Black Hawk utility helicopters as from 2016.
With the signing of an additional signature clause to the FNC, the Slovak Republic signed up to the Framework Nations Concept, an initiative by Germany to reinforce the defence capabilities of NATO/EU member states. On the FNC initiative, Martin Glváč remarked: “It is important to demonstrate our commitment and ability to deal with threats.” He added that Slovakia welcomes the German initiative to unite the European Allies with the intent of cooperating to remove deficiencies within NATO’s priority capabilities.
