Before NATO summit in the Hague: Spain rejects NATO’s five percent target

Spain is blocked against NATO plans to increase defense spending to five percent of gross domestic product. The Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced this in a letter to the Secretary General of the North Atlantic Allianz, Mark Rutte, the state TV broadcaster RTVE and other media reported. The government in Madrid confirmed this information on request.

Sánchez therefore wrote that an increase in defense expenditure to a total of five percent of GDP by 2032, as it is proposed, is “not only unreasonable for his country, but even counterproductive”. Therefore, at the NATO summit next week in the Haag, you will “not be able to set a specific output goal (…)”.

This statement by Sánchez is not surprising. At the end of May, Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares emphasized when he visited his German counterpart Johann WadePhul (CDU) at the joint press conference, Spain prompted the defense sector as great efforts than ever before. The existing NATO target of two percent GDP is “realistic”.

In Madrid one speaks of a “big mistake”

Defense Minister Margarita Robles meanwhile even described the NATO plans as a “big mistake”. “We are of the opinion that the process cannot be to set a percentage first and then determine the skills, it must be the other way around.”

With military spending of around 1.3 percent of GDP, Spain is one of the largest aftertacks in the Allianz. In April, however, the left-wing government announced that it would like to reach the two percent goal this year. This was actually only planned for 2029. Madrid wants to spend almost 10.5 billion euros on for this, around 50 percent more than before.