A million euros a minute: inside NATO’s Hague summit, where success and setbacks meet
This is the first meeting of NATO leaders in US President Donald Trump’s second term; the first summit ever hosted by the Netherlands; and the shortest summit in the Alliance’s history. Dutch media and even NATO security personnel are confident that it is also the most expensive.
Local media outlets are quoting a (very simplified but striking) calculation: each minute of the leaders’ discussions will cost the national budget over €1 million.
More than half of the Dutch police force will be deployed to provide security for the summit – an impressive figure. And of course, the sweeping restrictions typical of US presidential visits are in place.
But what is even more important are the results the summit will deliver.
The main objective that NATO has been publicly pursuing, and for which Trump and his team have pressured their partners, will be achieved: all NATO member states will commit to spending 5% of GDP on defence.
There are downsides too: the target will only be reached in ten years’ time, not five as the US had demanded. And some countries are not exactly hiding the fact that they have no real plans to fulfil the pledge.
Still, despite these shortcomings, this NATO decision will be historic for the Alliance and beneficial for Ukraine. The Hague summit won’t work miracles, but it will bring Ukraine some tangible positives. Notably, during the preparation process, the US accepted the fact that Ukraine’s path to NATO will continue.
When it comes to engagement with the Indo-Pacific region, however, the "Trump summit" is an undeniable fiasco. And the responsibility for that lies squarely with the US president.
The million-euros-a-minute summit
Strict security restrictions that disrupt daily life are a standard feature of NATO leader-level summits. While The Hague summit isn’t the most extreme case, residents of the Netherlands’ political capital are still facing some major inconveniences.
Key city roads – the S100, S200 and S101 – have been closed for several days, as has one of the two main highways connecting the city to the airport. The centre of The Hague has been fenced off with a 3-metre-high barrier and is completely off-limits to anyone other than summit guests and security personnel. It is surrounded by an even wider high-security zone, where ID is checked repeatedly.
The restrictions in Washington DC for President Biden’s "farewell" NATO summit in 2024 were even tighter. But this level of security is unprecedented for The Hague. Despite being a NATO founding member, the Netherlands has never hosted a summit before.
The Dutch government has taken the responsibility of safeguarding the Alliance’s leaders very seriously indeed. According to official figures, over half of the national police force – 27,000 officers – have been deployed.
Pieter-Jaap Aalbersberg, the country’s national coordinator for counterterrorism and security, told the public broadcaster NOS that the Netherlands was "working at the edge of its capacity" in the lead-up to the summit. "We couldn’t have handled any more. If 50 more VIPs had come, we’d probably have had to request international support," he admitted.
Not all Dutch citizens support the enormous scale of the operation.
Even the security personnel checking journalists at the summit perimeter expressed frustration. "You know this is the most expensive NATO summit security ever," one officer remarked, glancing around at the screening equipment. "This cost €200 million!"
Indeed, the amount of money spent on the summit, much of it on security, has sparked a major public debate, especially after the Dutch government confirmed that the NATO summit has cost the budget €183.4 million, nearly twice the amount originally projected.
That is an awful lot of money – especially compared to the 2023 summit in Vilnius, which cost six times less, even though Lithuania borders both Belarus and Russia.
A comparison from the Dutch media outlet AD has gone viral.
"Each minute of the summit costs over a million euros. This is the most expensive meeting in NATO history," it wrote.
AD pointed out that the Hague summit will also be the shortest in the Alliance's modern history. In an effort to accommodate Trump, who dislikes lengthy discussions, the substantive, non-ceremonial part of the summit has been cut down to a single two-and-a-half-hour panel.
While the maths behind that estimate is certainly debatable, it has become a popular topic in the Dutch media and public discourse.
NATO’s Spanish issue
European Pravda has previously detailed how the lead-up to the summit was dominated by negotiations over defence spending.
Trump publicly demanded that NATO members commit 5% of their GDP to defence – a dramatic increase from the current benchmark of 2%.
Several member states, especially those that are geographically distant from Russia and feel no direct military threat, strongly opposed such an ambitious commitment.
Eventually NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte negotiated a compromise with the US: 3.5% of GDP would go towards traditional defence, while the other 1.5% could count towards "soft security" expenditure such as civilian infrastructure projects. The US also agreed to a longer timeline: instead of the Europeans having to reach the target within five years (as originally demanded), the final deal extended it to a 10-year period.
This more lenient formula was acceptable to nearly all NATO members – except one.
Spain became the summit’s biggest holdout.
There were several factors at play here.
First, geography. The Spanish are not particularly concerned about the Russian threat, so there is little public support for increasing defence spending.
Second, the economy. Spain is facing systemic budgetary and debt problems, making a significant rise in defence expenditure a real challenge for the government.
Third, ideology. Spain’s current government is formed by two left-wing parties. Leftist ideology is generally inclined toward pacifism. Moreover, the Spanish left is traditionally extremely sceptical about any "instructions from the US" – even more so when the president is as far to the right as Trump.
Fourthly and most crucially, domestic politics. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is currently in a particularly precarious position, due in part to allegations of corruption. He leads a minority government, meaning he lacks a solid majority in parliament and has to constantly seek support from other factions.
That means Sánchez has to tread especially carefully.
Sources say Spain was unofficially urged to agree to Trump’s demand even if it had no real intention of fulfilling it. After all, it wouldn’t have been the first time. At the 2014 NATO summit in Wales, following Russia’s annexation of Crimea, all the member states pledged to raise defence spending to 2% of GDP, but many dragged their feet for years.
But for Sánchez, even a symbolic commitment seemed politically risky. Spain publicly opposed increasing spending beyond 2% of GDP, and its veto threatened to derail the entire agreement. According to European Pravda sources, the summit itself was teetering on the verge of collapse.
By last week, tensions had escalated.
Trump began to hint that he might skip the summit altogether.
US Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker even cancelled scheduled media briefings on Friday.
The breakthrough only came late on Sunday 22 June, when NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte sent Sánchez a letter guaranteeing Spain "the flexibility to determine its own sovereign path for reaching the Capability Target goal and the annual resources necessary as a share of GDP to submit its own annual plans".
Sánchez promptly published the letter and framed it as a domestic political victory. Spain then lifted its veto, and the summit could move forward.
But the dispute wasn’t resolved, only shelved.
The Spanish government is now portraying the letter as a green light to ignore the 5% target altogether and spend what it deems necessary for defence. They say they have been promised "flexibility regarding the share of GDP", implying that the 5% target may not apply to them.
But officials in Brussels strongly disagree. They argue the "flexibility" relates solely to how Spain reaches the 5% target – allowing back-loaded spending increases, for instance – not whether it must comply. Secretary General Mark Rutte and other NATO leaders have reiterated that the target of 5% within 10 years applies to all members, with no exceptions.
In short, the disagreement hasn’t been resolved. It was papered over in hopes of avoiding a public confrontation during the summit. But even that proved overly optimistic.
Already two other countries, Belgium and Slovakia, have publicly questioned why Spain should get special treatment. Their message: "What about us? We deserve flexibility too."
As a result, NATO’s internal rift over defence spending is unlikely to fade away. Spain may soon face pressure to revise its public stance or risk leading a growing bloc of dissenting members unwilling to commit to Trump’s 5% target.
Good news for Ukraine
In contrast to the complicated relations between NATO members, it can be stated that for Ukraine, only positive news is expected from the summit in The Hague.
First and foremost, the increase in defence spending by NATO member states (even if some of them ignore the joint decision) is in itself good news for us. More spending by European countries on procuring weapons and developing their defence industries means more weapons that those countries will be able to send to the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
As early as the beginning of June, European Pravda, citing sources, published details of the decision that was expected to be made at the meeting of NATO leaders. All of that information is now being confirmed.
And most importantly, the NATO decision will directly foresee and encourage funding for the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Member states will count this funding towards their "defence spending", and that will help them meet their target commitments.
The full text of the NATO summit’s final decision has not yet been published, but Secretary General Mark Rutte has already acknowledged that this provision will be included.
"You will find in the communiqué which has now been agreed by the ambassadors, so the North Atlantic Council – you will see important language about Ukraine, including connecting the defence spending up to 2035 to Ukraine, and the need for Ukraine to stay in the fight," he said.
Incidentally, Rutte’s remark also means that Hungary, despite public resistance, has agreed to this wording. However, this did not come as a surprise. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán does indeed consistently promote the shameful narrative that "we need to stop supplying weapons to Ukraine to bring peace", but at the same time, Orbán’s position is heavily influenced by the United States, and he cannot block provisions that are supported by the Trump administration.
Even more important are the statements that have been made about Ukraine's path toward NATO membership.
The agreed strategy was as follows: to avoid provoking Trump or sparking conflict, the Alliance would deliberately sidestep the issue of Ukraine’s membership. Legally, this means that the favourable decision made at the Washington summit – on the irreversibility of Ukraine's accession – will remain in force.
And if the issue is swept under the carpet, then the US administration won’t be troubled by it.
However, the current situation appears even more favourable.
It is true that the summit decision will not contain a single word about Ukraine’s path to membership. Overall, the decision will be very brief – around three paragraphs – so most issues will remain outside its scope.
Nevertheless, as it turns out, the topic will not be entirely ignored either. In recent statements, including at a key pre-summit press conference, Rutte has emphasised several times that the Alliance maintains that the decision on the irreversibility of Ukraine's NATO membership remains valid, and that the "irreversible path to membership" will continue after the summit with Trump.
Such statements could not have been repeatedly made by the secretary general ahead of the summit without being coordinated with the United States.
Indo-Pacific fiasco
And finally, a problem that doesn’t concern Ukraine directly but highlights just how chaotic the current state of affairs is when it comes to the relationship between the US (and by extension, NATO) and the rest of the world.
For Ukraine and our European partners, the European dimension of transatlantic security – namely resisting and deterring Russia – is paramount. But for the United States, the primary concern is its confrontation with China. The Americans pushed for China to be mentioned in the summit’s final statement. They were also interested in holding a separate meeting between all NATO members and the Alliance’s four main partners in the Indo-Pacific region: Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.
Invitations were sent out to the leaders of the "IP4" and they planned to come to The Hague, hoping for either bilateral or joint meetings with Trump.
Then came the disaster at the G7 summit in Canada.
To recap: a week ago, Trump abruptly left the G7 summit midway, cancelling all the meetings that had been scheduled for the second day, including talks with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. But this didn’t only affect Ukraine. It also led to what would have been Trump’s first meeting as president with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese being cancelled – a major political blow to Albanese back home.
There was no justification for the snub – Trump simply decided to cut his visit short. And that gave out an additional warning signal to others that they, too, might be "stood up" in The Hague.
Unwilling to risk being humiliated a second time, the Australian prime minister announced he would only be sending a minister to The Hague. South Korean President Lee Jae-myung made the same decision. Finally, over the weekend, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba cancelled as well.
The only one of the four who’ll be sticking to the original plans and attending the NATO summit is New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon. Notably, however, he will be flying to The Hague from… China, straight from talks with Xi Jinping. This is certainly not the signal Trump would have wanted to see.
But the current US president’s strategy of chaos sometimes has unexpected consequences. And this is yet another component of the new geopolitical reality being shaped by the actions of the US president.
Sergiy Sydorenko,
Editor, European Pravda, from The Hague