LONDON, July 1. /TASS/. NATO’s next summit in Albania scheduled for 2027 may be canceled due to Tirana's low defense spending, and worries that that might upset Donald Trump, Reuters news agency quoted a NATO diplomat, European official and three people familiar with the matter as saying.
According to it, the plans for the 2027 summit in Albania were first outlined in a statement following the alliance’s meeting in the Netherlands last year. At that time, NATO announced that the 2026 summit would take place in Ankara, Turkey on July 7-8. According to Reuters sources, there is no mention of the date and venue of the 2027 summit in the documents pertaining to the Ankara meeting.
The move comes as European NATO members get ready for a high-stakes Ankara meeting where they will seek to show US President Donald Trump that they have made progress on defense spending pledges while trying not to clash openly with him.
One of the people familiar with the discussions said Albania’s defense spending is such that if NATO holds a summit in the country in 2027, Trump may cause a stir, and that will play badly in the media.
Reuters reported in April that NATO is considering ending its recent practice of holding annual summits, a move linked to wanting to avoid any friction with Trump in the latter years of his presidency.