MOSCOW (Sputnik) — On Monday, in an interview with The Times newspaper, US President-elect Donald Trump called NATO an "obsolete" organization, since it is not much engaged in countering terrorism, while its member countries' contributions are not efficient.
"The problem … is that European countries don’t invest enough in their own national armies. This leads to shortages in military capabilities within the alliance. I think that this European ‘underinvestment’ is mainly due to inefficiencies arising from the fact that we don’t cooperate enough," Vautmans said.
Vautmans added that increase in transnational military cooperation within Europe would enable investments to become more beneficial.
The politician also stressed the necessity to foster European military cooperation to make a step toward establishing a "European Army that can both operate on its own and within the Transatlantic framework."
On November 14, the European states agreed on a new plan on the EU security and defense, which excluded the creation of an EU army. According to the European Commission, the bloc is also set to allocate up to 90 million euros ($97 million) from its budget to defense research by 2020.
The discussions on Europe's defense have become more active following the victory of Trump in the US presidential election. During the presidential race Trump repeatedly said that the United States should decrease the support of other NATO member states and protect only those members of the alliance, who "fulfil their obligations" to Washington.
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