Nine years after the Heads of State and Government of the 30 NATO member countries, only seven fulfill the commitment to invest 2% of their GDP in defense. "We celebrate the progress, the fact that all the countries have increased spending and there are more that meet the objective or are very close" but "in a more dangerous world, more must be invested in defense", warned the Secretary General of the military organization, Jens Stoltenberg, during the presentation of the annual activity report for 2022, an exercise marked by the consequences of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In 2014, the year of the illegal annexation of Crimea, defense spending in Europe and Canada had been declining for years to the chagrin of the United States. Now "the landscape has completely changed," admits Stoltenberg. This budget item is rising in all allied countries but "the rate at which it is increasing is not enough." Currently, defense spending exceeds 2% of GDP in the United States, the United Kingdom and Greece, Lithuania, which has doubled it in a year, Poland, Estonia and Latvia. Although the gains have been more modest in France and Croatia (1.9%), both countries are about to cross this threshold.
Spain, however, remains the penultimate allied country in defense spending; According to data from the Alliance, in 2022 it allocated 1.09% of its GDP to defense. According to the government's plans, spending on this game will increase by 25.8% in 2023, a boost that should make it possible to reach the goal of 2% of GDP in 2029. "NATO has allowed its members to live almost 75 years in peace but now we are facing the most dangerous world situation since the Second World War", emphasized Stoltenberg, who will take advantage of the leaders' summit in July in Vilnius to ask them to assume the 2% "not as a ceiling but as a a floor, a minimum".
