President Iohannis: Defence starts at home, splitting duties in NATO, all the way to financial burden sharing

President Iohannis stated on Thursday that "defence starts at home", adding that splitting duties within NATO should include dividing financial burdens as well. 

"Defence starts at home, as the saying goes, and splitting duties should go all the way to dividing financial burdens, included," Iohannis told the joint press conference alongside his Polis counterpart Andrzej Duda, highlighting that ever since last year Romania has allocated 2 percent of its GDP to defence matters and that large endowment projects have already kicked off. 

He underscored that Romania's and Poland's common interest with regard to NATO is the Eastern Flank and its security. 

" I believe everybody knows which are the threats, everybody knows the difficult vicinity, everybody has understood that the Western Flank is not composed of several parts that need to be treated separately, but the Eastern Flank is made up of nations that want to defend the Eastern Flank together, but naturally want, at the same time, to benefit form the support of the other NATO members," Iohannis showed. 

"At the same time - and we have both emphasised that in our talks - the transatlantic relation is at NATO's core and we must strengthen it. For NATO, this is vital, just as it is vital for the European Union. From a practical perspective, our expectations are that at the high level meeting in Brussels we have decisions backing the further consolidation of NATO's deterrence and defence posture and we find that we have a boost of the Alliance's efficiency," Iohannis said.