Madrid, October 9 (BNA) The next NATO summit will be held in Madrid on June 29-30, 2022, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Spain’s accession to the alliance.
The date was announced by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez during a visit by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Friday. The Secretary-General also met King Philip VI at Zarzuela Palace.
In his talks with Sanchez, along with Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Alparis Bueno and Defense Minister Margarita Robles Fernandez, Stoltenberg expressed his gratitude to Spain for hosting the upcoming summit.
“This accession cemented Spain among the free and democratic nations of the transatlantic community, and also paved the way for your country’s membership in the European Union a few years later,” Stoltenberg said.
“We need to continue to adapt to the future. And that is exactly what we will do at the Madrid Summit next year.”
NATO leaders are expected to make important decisions to implement NATO’s ambitious 2030 agenda, including strengthening the alliance’s resilience and cyber defenses, honing its technological capacity, and addressing the security impact of climate change, according to a NATO statement.
The Secretary-General indicated that the next NATO Strategic Concept will also be adopted at the 2022 Summit.
The Madrid Strategic Concept will reflect the new security environment, recommit to our values, and reaffirm our unity. Making sure our alliance is fit for the future.”
At their summit in Brussels in June 2021, NATO leaders agreed to develop the next Strategic Concept in time for the next summit in 2022.
According to NATO, strategic concepts prepare the Alliance for security challenges, guide its future political and military development, and reaffirm NATO’s purpose, enduring nature and core security missions.
“They are reviewed to take into account changes in the global security environment to ensure that the Alliance is adequately prepared to carry out its core missions, making transformation in the broad sense of the term a permanent feature of the organisation,” NATO said.
The current strategic concept “Active Engagement and Modern Defense” (2010) identifies three basic core tasks – collective defense, crisis management, and cooperative security.