Slovakia joins V4 declaration at NATO summit

The Visegrad Four countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) released a joint declaration on the importance of close regional defence cooperation in defining and implementing effective collective measures. V4 countries are all in NATO and their joint declaration comes on the side-lines of the organisation's summit in Brussels on Thursday. The declaration emphasised that a fair contribution to defence by all NATO members represents a pillar of unity and solidarity in the military alliance. The four countries reiterated their pledge to increase their defence budgets to 2 percent of their respective GDP by 2024, and supported the NATO Readiness Initiative designed to boost the readiness of NATO's military force.
They also highlighted the importance of the so-called 360-degree approach by NATO by committing themselves to continue in the Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan. They also supported the process of transforming and expanding NATO's training activities in Iraq into a mission, and Slovak-Polish efforts to train Iraqi personnel in the maintenance of Soviet military equipment. The declaration also welcomed the deepening of cooperation between NATO and the EU, mainly in military mobility, parallel and coordinated exercises, the fight against hybrid threats, in cyber security and operational cooperation in the Mediterranean to tackle illegal migration.