Georgia Meloni, Italy’s Prime Minister, declared at the European Union summit in Yerevan that, following the United States’ decision to reduce its military presence in several European countries, the EU must strengthen its security and response capabilities.<\/p>\n
These remarks came after US President Donald Trump announced plans to decrease American troop levels in Italy and Spain. It has also been reported that around 5,000 US soldiers will be withdrawn from Germany, a move that follows tensions between Washington and Berlin.<\/p>\n
Responding to a question about the US president’s decision, Meloni said she could not predict what would happen but emphasized that the US has been discussing reducing its presence in Europe for some time. Therefore, European countries need to enhance their defense capacity and responsiveness. She added that the decision is not hers to make and that she personally disagrees with it.<\/p>\n
The White House had previously threatened to reduce the US military footprint in Italy. International media have interpreted these developments as a sign of growing rifts between Washington and certain NATO members during Trump’s second term in office.<\/p>\n
Trump has repeatedly stated that American forces disproportionately bear the burden of Western security responsibilities, especially in light of the Russia-Ukraine war. He has also criticized some European countries, including Italy and Spain, for not participating in a military strike against Iran\u2014a strike that several European nations described as violating international law.<\/p>\n
On Monday, Meloni underscored that Italy has consistently honored its commitments and dismissed some of the accusations made against the country as unfounded. According to announced plans, she is scheduled to meet with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Rome on Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Italy\u2019s Prime Minister Meloni calls for Europe to strengthen security as the US plans to reduce military troops in Italy, Spain, and Germany.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12167,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}