Defense expenditure: Lait Spain wants to achieve NATO goal as early as 2025

Spain wants to achieve NATO’s two percent goal this year. To fulfill the target, almost 10.5 billion euros will be spent, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced in Madrid. Parliament’s approval is not necessary for this, the head of the left -wing minority government assured.

So far, Madrid had only reached the prospect of reaching the NATO minimum goal “by 2029 at the latest. With military spending of almost 20 billion euros or around 1.3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), Spain is one of the largest aftertacks within NATO.

The member states of the western defense alliance decided to two percent of GDP over ten years ago. US President Donald Trump is now even calling for the European NATO partners to increase military spending to five percent of GDP.

Resistance and criticism also in your own ranks

The increase in defense spending by around 50 percent is also controversial in Spain within the government coalition. Minister of Labor Yolanda Díaz, head of the coalition junior partner Sumar, recently said several times that the upgraded upgrading is not the right way.

At his announcement, Sánchez said that he wanted to explain the plans of his government in parliament soon, even if no approval by the Madrider “Congeso de los Diputados” was necessary. He called on “putting the party internal interests and thinking in the spirit of the country and Europe”. There will be no reduction in social expenditure. Due to the “good development of the Spanish economy”, no additional tax revenue will be needed to increase defense spending.