{"id":8631,"date":"2026-04-04T10:23:27","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T10:23:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/8631\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T10:23:27","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T10:23:27","slug":"as-nato-concerns-persist-von-der-leyen-urges-eu-to-fortify-defense-clause-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/8631\/","title":{"rendered":"As NATO concerns persist, von der Leyen urges EU to fortify defense clause \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;I believe the time has come to bring Europe\u2019s mutual defense clause to life,&#8221; von der Leyen said, without providing specifics. &#8220;Mutual defense is not optional for the EU. It is an obligation within our own Treaty \u2014 Article 42.7 &#8230; It is our collective commitment to stand by each other in case of aggression.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But working to clarify how that article could be activated doesn\u2019t mean junking existing reliance on NATO and the U.S. for the continent\u2019s security. However, Europe will have to do more to stand on its own, she said.<\/p>\n<p>Dusting off 42.7 is a response to a year of unparalleled attacks on the continent from Trump\u2019s administration, from Vice President JD Vance\u2019s scorching attack on Europe at last year\u2019s Munich conference, to Trump casting doubt on Article 5, denigrating the contribution of allies who fought alongside the U.S. in Afghanistan and \u2014 most significantly \u2014 calling for the annexation of Greenland, a Danish territory.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEurope needs to step up and has to take on its responsibility. Admittedly, it has taken some shock therapy,\u201d von der Leyen said. \u201cAnd some lines have been crossed that cannot be uncrossed anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Commission president spoke after <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/marco-rubio-msc-europe-we-belong-together\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">U.S Secretary of State Marco Rubio emphasized<\/a> the U.S. and Europe\u2019s economic, military, cultural and spiritual connections and said: \u201cWe want Europe to be strong. We believe that Europe must survive.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Von der Leyen said that \u201cthis was for me very reassuring to listen to him,\u201d but \u2014 in line with other European leaders \u2014 she said that the continent will have to do much more to be less reliant on others, including the United States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#8220;I believe the time has come to bring Europe\u2019s mutual defense clause to life,&#8221; von der Leyen said,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8632,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[137],"tags":[399,1428,8118,1332,8119,932,403,185],"class_list":["post-8631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ursula-von-der-leyen","tag-defense","tag-european-defense","tag-european-defense-policy","tag-military","tag-multinational-defense-programs","tag-security","tag-ursula-von-der-leyen","tag-war"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116345949764720664","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8631\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}