Kiska: Upping defence spending to 2 pc of GDP 'long-distance run'

Slovak President Andrej Kiska, commenting at the end of the two-day NATO summit in Brussels on Thursday on US President Donald Trump's call for member states to increase defence spending immediately to 2 percent of GDP, said: "Although it's a duty, it's a long-distance run." Meanwhile, when it came to Trump's proposal to increase defence spending to 4 percent of GDP, Kiska said that no other leader had reacted to it, even though several countries have already been spending more than 2 percent of GDP on their military. Kiska said governments of individual member states needed to "communicate a lot with their people, using much empathy" to attune the public to the 2-percent commitment.