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Greenland 'is very important for US, but not important for Denmark,' Trump says
Rutte says he understands Trump’s frustrations, but insists these are “isolated” cases, with many European countries helping out. He very softly pushes back on some specific countries that Trump named earlier, including Germany and France.
Trump comes back with pointed criticism of the UK which “would not let us use the island for two weeks,” and Italy being “very bad.”
But Rutte says that Trump “even got Spain to pay 2%.”
On Greenland, Rutte says the pair agreed at Davos to increase US military presence there, and he pledges to “make sure that deal is step by step being implemented.”
But this only triggers Trump to go again and say Greenland is “very important for the US, but it’s not important for Denmark” (that’s not true).
He then goes on a rant about the second world war and Nazis in Denmark, before coming back to say he is “very unhappy with Nato.”
Rutte comes back with over-the-top praise for Trump, which makes the US president go “that’s why I like him.”
Key events
As reporters are ushered out of the room, Nato’s Rutte says it is “really huge, to quote someone at this table, huge and big” that Turkey is hosting this event.
God knows what that is even supposed to mean.
But on that note, the session goes behind the closed doors, so we won’t hear from the leader for the next few hours.
Judging by this last comment, maybe that’s actually a good thing?
Turkey’s Erdoğan opens the session, talking about Turkey’s ramping up of its defence production and export capacity, including an additional $24bn budget on boost Nato’s air and missile defences.
He also calls on countries to “lift” all restrictions in defence industry cooperation – including excluding non-EU allies from its defence programmes – and “refrain from taking decisions and actions that may weaken the integrity of the alliance and transatlantic relationships.”
He says he backs Trump’s vision for peace in Ukraine, and pledges to continue to support PURL purchases for Kyiv.
On Iran, he thanks US, Spain, Germany, Italy for their help during the Iran war.
The formal session is now finally getting under way.
We should get a few brief speeches and then they will move on to shouting at each other discussing the issues of particular importance behind the closed doors.
As they gather for the opening session, it looks like the leaders got personalised pens as a gift from the hosts, Turkey.
Cute.
Madrid downplaying Trump's renewed threats to cut trade with Spain
Sam Jones
in Madrid
Madrid is downplaying Trump’s renewed threat to cut all trade with Spain.
Spanish government sources said they were greeting the US president’s latest broadside calmly, adding:
“Our country maintains an excellent social, cultural, and economic relationship with the US, and we have no intention of changing that.”
They also suggested people would do well to reflect on three things:
“One, that the US has a trade surplus with Spain (meaning it benefits more from this relationship than we do). Two, that the EU is a trading union in which no member state can be singled out (as the commission itself has emphasised on several occasions). And three, that economic ties are forged by private companies, not governments. The bilateral relationship between the US and Spain is beneficial for both countries, both in the commercial and defence spheres.”
And let’s remember that we’ve been here before. In March, Trump threatened to cut all trade with Spain after it refused the US permission to use jointly operated bases in southern Spain to continue its attacks in Iran.
Not much to report on from the arrivals, but it’s worth noting that France’s Emmanuel Macron is back to wearing his aviators, even indoors.
When he did that first in Davos earlier this year, we were told it was due to a broken blood vessel in his eye. His cool look attracted lots of attention, and a deluge of new orders for the makers of his glasses.
He has been wearing them again for about a week now. Could it be that the eye problem is now back?
Elsewhere in Nato fashion news, Albania’s Edi Rama is wearing his trademark snow white sneakers.
If you want some help with who is who, you can look at this family photo from last night.
At the first glance, it looks like all the other family photos you have seen over the years, but there is a small little nerdy nugget here: if you look at the second row, you have Czech representatives … on both flanks.
The Czech prime minister, Andrej Babiš, is on the far left, and the country’s president, Petr Pavel, on the far right.
It is a consequence of an unresolved competence dispute between the two, which saw the country’s constitutional tribunal intervene last month, ordering the government to allow Pavel to take part, in line with previous precedents.
The dispute is expected to be properly settled with a longer hearing later this year.
Leaders arrive for official welcome as Nato summit in Ankara gets underway
Meanwhile, the leaders are now arriving for the official welcome ceremony, getting a handshake from Rutte and Erdoğan
If you want to play the game of guessing who is who – Sweden’s Ulf Kristersson and Greece’s Kyriakos Mitsotakis were the last two just now – you can watch it live here:
Trump's theatrical threat to cut off all trade with Spain is not new - snap analysis
Trump’s comments on Spain – including his somewhat theatrical demand to cut all trade with Madrid – are particularly interesting.
But he has done it so many times before, but not much actually happened.
He said it first in March, when Spain pointedly refused to back his Iran war, prompting an angry response from the European Commission, which pointed out that you can’t really cut off trade with one specific EU country (Europe Live, 4 March).
Trump is not in a mood to hold back - snap analysis
Arriving in Ankara, European leaders were probably resigned to the fact that Donald Trump would say something difficult during this summit, but he is clearly even trying to hold back this morning.
He has powerfully reiterated his frustration with Nato, pointedly criticising an array of countries – with Spain, the UK and Italy getting the most stick – before repeating his demand to take control of Greenland and calling it “a big problem.”
Ouch.
This will not make the subsequent leaders’ meeting any easier.
