NATO chief Rutte to meet European defense CEOs to accelerate arms production ahead of Ankara summit

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte will hold a summit with the chief executives of Europe’s leading defense corporations next week in Brussels, moving to accelerate arms production across the continent, the Financial Times reported.

The meeting will bring together the heads of Rheinmetall, Safran, Airbus, Saab, MBDA, and Leonardo. While Rutte routinely communicates with individual industry leaders, diplomats noted that a collective industrial assembly of this magnitude is highly unusual and reflects an escalating sense of geopolitical urgency.

The primary catalyst for the meeting is the upcoming NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, scheduled for July. The alliance is working under pressure to finalize concrete weapons procurement packages before arriving in Ankara, primarily to address intense criticism from US President Donald Trump. At last year’s NATO summit, alliance members agreed to elevate defense spending targets to 5% of individual member GDP. Sources close to the planning told reporters that by focusing the Ankara summit tightly on localized multi-billion-dollar arms procurement deals, European leaders hope to "allow Trump to take the credit" for forcing Europe to pay for its own security, potentially mending frayed transatlantic ties.

The push comes after Trump repeatedly labeled NATO "absolutely useless" during domestic rallies, lambasting European allies for refusing to deploy naval forces to the Strait of Hormuz or offer airspace during recent US operations against Iran.

Rutte’s core objective is to persuade European defense giants to aggressively expand assembly lines and invest capital immediately, without waiting for formal, long-term government purchase orders to clear bureaucratic channels. For years, European defense ministries and private manufacturers have locked horns over manufacturing speed. Corporate boards argue that they cannot ethically expand factories without decades-long contractual guarantees from states, while governments complain that the private sector has been far too slow to react to the reality of the war in Eastern Europe. Rutte intends to bridge this gap, focusing specifically on resolving chronic deficits in long-range missile supplies, which remain the top conventional anxiety for European capitals.

The Brussels meeting comes on the heels of a targeted diplomatic visit by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, who met with Rutte to discuss scaling up Ukraine’s domestic arms manufacturing capabilities by directly plugging them into NATO’s industrial base. Kyiv is heavily pushing for expanded alliance contributions to the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL), an alliance mechanism designed to fast-track urgent air defense systems. By restructuring European production lines now, Rutte hopes to build a self-sustaining continental industrial base capable of maintaining long-term deterrence – ensuring European security holds firm even if Washington pursues a partial drawdown of its European troop presence.