Watch a short film clip of this evening
	BRUSSELS - NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer identified European governments’ unwillingness to devote more resources to defence and called for a real show of political will to defence spending at an evening debate hosted by the Security & Defence Agenda (SDA) on Monday 27 January 2009. Speaking less than a week after the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States, he called for close support from the EU member states for the Obama administration within the context of the Alliance.
Looking ahead to a much-anticipated Strasbourg-Kehl summit in two months, De Hoop Scheffer highlighted piracy, cyber-terrorism, energy security, and instability in South Asia as priorities for the Alliance. He reminded the audience that while progress in Afghanistan was visible, with “relative peace” in certain areas, a regional approach of engaging Pakistan, Iran, India and China to tackle extremism was critical to enduring peace and stability in Afghanistan.	Full speech of Jaap de Hoop Scheffer
Full Q&A session afterwards
	De Hoop Scheffer added that he doesn’t anticipate further NATO enlargement as being “around the corner.”   For any further information on this event, please contact the Security & Defence Agenda (SDA). The SDA is a Think Tank Europe network partner of Europe's World.