Luc Frieden and Xavier Bettel attend the "NATO Summit 2024" in Washington

As the representative of a founding country, the Prime Minister took the opportunity to underline Luxembourg's unwavering attachment to this transatlantic alliance and the shared values of democracy, individual freedom, human rights and the rule of law that it represents.

In order to continue to ensure a collective defence adapted to the deteriorating security context, the Heads of State and Government took new measures to strengthen the Alliance's posture of deterrence and collective defence. In this context, the Prime Minister reaffirmed that Luxembourg will assume its responsibilities as a Solidarity Ally and will continue to fully respect its defence investment commitments: "Since 2014, Luxembourg has more than tripled its defence effort and we will maintain this upward trend to reach 2% in 2030." This roadmap implies the development of capabilities in the land, air, cyber and space domains.

On land, the priority is to create a bi-national Belgian-Luxembourg combat reconnaissance battalion. In the air, Luxembourg plans to develop integrated air and missile defence capabilities, one of the priorities adopted in Washington in view of the growing threat posed by the proliferation of ballistic, cruise and hypersonic missiles.

In addition to the posture of deterrence and collective defence, NATO's partnerships with the European Union and the four Indo-Pacific partners, as well as support for Ukraine, were also on the Summit agenda.

In the margins of the Summit, the Prime Minister and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in the presence of Vice Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, signed a long-term security and assistance cooperation agreement between their two countries. As such, Luxembourg is the 22nd country to sign such an agreement, which follows a joint G7 declaration of support for Ukraine endorsed by 32 countries in 2023.

Prime Minister Frieden noted the symbolic nature of the signing in Washington, on the sidelines of the NATO summit, but also on the ground of our liberators in the Second World War. Today it is Ukraine that needs friends to help it resist invasion.

At the Summit, NATO Heads of State and Government adopted a commitment to strengthen the industrial capabilities of Allies in order to develop the Alliance's industrial base. This commitment provides for the development of national plans to strengthen industrial capacity, increase interoperability, eliminate barriers to trade and investment and prioritise multinational procurement, in particular by relying on the Luxembourg-based NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA).

In the margins of the Summit, Xavier Bettel, on behalf of Minister of Defence Yuriko Backes, signed a Memorandum of Understanding on the Alliance's Persistent Surveillance from Space (APSS) capability. The APSS programme aims to improve situational awareness on the ground, particularly in times of conflict, by creating a virtual constellation of national and commercial space assets. Once the APSS programme is up and running, the French Defence Procurement Agency will contribute images from its LUXEOSys Earth observation satellite to the programme.

Minister Bettel also signed, on behalf of the Minister of Defence, a letter of intent on the high-profile multinational ACE (Allied software for Cloud and Edge services) project. In order to ensure the interoperability of the future Luxembourg Cyber Defence Cloud (LCDC) with future cloud solutions used within NATO, this project is of particular interest to the Luxembourg Directorate of Defence.

On the last day of the Summit, the Prime Minister attended a breakfast on artificial intelligence (AI) at the Luxembourg Embassy in Washington, in the presence of US Congressman Ro Khanna and a panel of high-level experts. The seminar provided an overview of the opportunities and challenges that this new technology brings to civil society, businesses and institutions.

Finally, the Summit was an occasion for the Prime Minister and VicePrime Minister to have many informal exchanges of views with their respective counterparts.

In this context, Minister Bettel underlined the importance of unity and solidarity within the Alliance, which, 75 years after its creation, continues to guarantee the security of the Euro-Atlantic area.

Minister of Defence Yuriko Backes was unable to attend the Washington summit due to a fractured tibia on 30 June 2024.

Press release by the Ministry of State, the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, Defence, Development Cooperation and Foreign Trade and the Directorate of Defence