Spain’s Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares and Portugal’s Prime Minister Luís Montenegro reaffirmed their countries’ commitment to boost defence spending to 2% of GDP by 2029.
Albares made the announcement in Brussels on the same day that NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte met with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez in Madrid. Spain’s defence budget currently stands at 1.8% of the country’s GDP, but Albares has pledged to get closer to NATO’s defence spending targets.
However, Rutte made it clear last week at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos that the 2% target was “not nearly enough” and that allies below that figure would have to reach it “in a couple of months.”
On Monday morning, Rutte met with Portuguese Prime Minister Montenegro, who said his country was also ready to move closer to the promised date of reaching the 2% defence target.
On this issue, we are available to anticipate even further our timetable in the evolution of our investment trajectory in this area.
Montenegro argued that the European Union should “act as a single bloc” and agree on the strategy and allocation of defence investments without “tripling or quadrupling” them. However, he also recognised the need to align “with the perspectives of the Atlantic Alliance.”
We can tell our partners, in particular the US, that together the 23 EU member states that are part of NATO already spend more than 2% of their gross domestic product on defence.
Rutte, for his part, insisted that increased efforts to militarise the alliance were necessary to preserve NATO.
That also means we have to spend more on our defence.
