Melike Pala
15 July 2026•Update: 15 July 2026
NATO Deputy Secretary General Radmila Shekerinska said Wednesday that last week's NATO summit in Ankara demonstrated the value of transatlantic defense industrial cooperation, highlighting joint projects involving Turkish, European and North American companies as key to strengthening the alliance's security.
Addressing members of the European Parliament's Security and Defense Committee (SEDE) and the delegation for relations with NATO, Shekerinska said closer industrial cooperation would reinforce both Europe's defense sector and the broader Euro-Atlantic defense industrial base.
"The industrial production capacity is not satisfactory neither in Europe, nor in the US, or in Canada," Shekerinska said, adding that closer cooperation across the alliance is essential to meet NATO's capability requirements.
"I think in Ankara we are really witnesses of the value of a strong industrial cooperation, which will be transatlantic, and it will make the European defense industry stronger, but also our Euro-Atlantic industry much stronger," she added, pointing to successful projects involving EU companies working alongside firms from Norway, the UK, Türkiye, the US and Canada.
According to Shekerinska, the NATO Defense Industry Forum, held alongside the summit, showcased how integrated transatlantic defense supply chains have become.
While some companies are viewed as either European or American, she said, many of the projects unveiled in Ankara rely on deeply interconnected supply chains spanning both sides of the Atlantic.
"This speaks really strongly in favor of a transatlantic industrial revolution, so we need less barriers, not more," she said.
Describing the Ankara summit as "transformational and tremendous success," Shekerinska said allies had demonstrated they were turning commitments made at last year's NATO summit in The Hague into concrete action.
The increased spending, she said, reflects a stronger European contribution within NATO and supports the alliance's vision of "a stronger Europe in a stronger NATO."
She said European allies had responded positively to US calls for greater burden-sharing, adding that increased defense spending must now be translated into concrete military capabilities through stronger industrial production.
