NATO and many of its member countries are no different from the United Kingdom in that many of the unglamorous but key enablers have been disinvested in. That may be the bridge strengthening in eastern Europe that would allow heavy armour to get to the frontlines—that used to be a total norm in every design in the 1980s and at the time of the cold war—or it may be logistical hubs or transport to get people rapidly to the front. All of that has in effect been the Cinderella of defence spending for too long across the alliance countries, including the United Kingdom. One of the ways through that is NATO common funding, and Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary-General, has an ambition for a significant increase in that funding. We will look sympathetically at that request, obviously balancing our own budget requirements, but also making sure that it is going to be used for those purposes.
It is here that places such as the EU can complement NATO. The EU has recently published what I think it calls its strategic compass, and I was very keen to make sure that the EU complemented NATO and did not compete with it. What can the EU do well? It can co-ordinate in sub-threshold areas such as cyber, transnational crime, transnational migration and disinformation, and also in infrastructure-readiness across its member states. I am incredibly supportive of the EU doing more in that space, which would complement the NATO response and make it even more effective.