NATO agrees to raise military spending to 5 percent of GDP by 2035, Spain secures waiver

Brussels – On the eve of The Hague summit, the Atlantic Alliance agreed on a new military spending target of 5 percent of GDP by 2035. The opposition from Madrid was overcome: Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced that he secured an exemption from NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and confirmed that Spain would allocate 2.1 percent of its gross domestic product to defense, “no more and no less.”

In particular, Sanchez, who had publicly rejected the new threshold as “unreasonable and counterproductive,” managed to secure more flexibility in the joint declaration that will be signed at the summit. The 5 percent threshold – comprising 3.5 percent in classical military expenditure and the remaining 1.5 percent for investment in dual-use, civil, and military technologies – can be fulfilled by meeting the capability targets the Alliance assigned to the 32 member states.

“We achieved this through discreet, effective, honest, and fair diplomatic negotiations, which safeguarded Spain’s sovereignty while ensuring the success of next week’s NATO summit in The Hague, the Netherlands. An achievement of which we are proud and grateful to the Secretary General of NATO, to my friend Mark Rutte, and the rest of the allies,” said the Socialist PM.

However, the discount granted to Madrid in order not to break NATO unity risks triggering a domino effect. Starting with the other seven NATO countries – Croatia, Portugal, Italy, Canada, Belgium, and Luxembourg – which by the end of 2024 had not yet reached the current target of 2 percent, set back in 2014, and could seize the window opened by Sanchez and decide to stick to the capacity targets set by the Alliance, in essence, the commitments of each ally in terms of means and men to ensure deterrence and collective defense. Indeed, Spain claims that, in its case, a national expenditure of 2.1 percent “will be sufficient to acquire and maintain all the personnel, equipment and infrastructure required by the Alliance.”

This morning, on his arrival at the EU Foreign Affairs Council, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said that “having obtained both the extension of the terms” from 2030 to 2035 “and flexibility,” Italy “will be able to reach the target” of 5 percent. The deputy prime minister emphasized that “this is not just about defense spending, but about security.”