{"id":422839,"date":"2025-03-27T15:26:27","date_gmt":"2025-03-27T14:26:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2025\/03\/27\/spesa-difesa-ue-2023-italia-armi-eurostat\/"},"modified":"2025-03-27T17:29:56","modified_gmt":"2025-03-27T16:29:56","slug":"defence-eu-increased-12-per-cent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2025\/03\/27\/defence-eu-increased-12-per-cent\/","title":{"rendered":"Defence, EU governments increased spending by 12 per cent in 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Brussels &#8211; The international scenario is becoming increasingly threatening for the countries of the old continent, especially those closest to its eastern border. No wonder, therefore, that <strong>in 2023<\/strong>,\u00a0<strong>the percentage of member states&#8217; public spending devoted to arms, equipment, defence systems, and military aid<\/strong> has generally\u00a0<strong>increased<\/strong>, reaching <strong>2.7 per cent of total EU government spending<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Eurostat <\/strong>reported this, releasing this morning (March 27)\u00a0the <a href=\"https:\/\/ec.europa.eu\/eurostat\/en\/web\/products-eurostat-news\/w\/ddn-20250327-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">data<\/a> on the military spending of the 27, taking a snapshot of the start of what increasingly looks like\u00a0a twelve-star rearmament. In absolute terms, in 2023, governments spent <strong>\u20ac227 billion <\/strong>on defence, or 1.3 per cent of European GDP, a\u00a0<strong>12 per cent<\/strong> increase over the 202 billion in 2022 and 10.8 per cent over the 183 billion in 2021. Therefore, the total spending items of European chancelleries went from 2.4 per cent in 2021 to 2.5 per cent in 2022 and to 2.7 per cent in the following year in the first three years of the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_422811\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"width: 731px;\">\n<p><figure id=\"attachment_422811\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-422811\" style=\"width: 731px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/government_expenditure_on_defence_2023-scaled.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-422811\" src=\"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/government_expenditure_on_defence_2023-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"731\" height=\"412\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/government_expenditure_on_defence_2023-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/government_expenditure_on_defence_2023-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/government_expenditure_on_defence_2023-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/government_expenditure_on_defence_2023-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/government_expenditure_on_defence_2023-2048x1152.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/government_expenditure_on_defence_2023-750x422.jpg 750w, https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/government_expenditure_on_defence_2023-1140x641.jpg 1140w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 731px) 100vw, 731px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-422811\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Fonte: Eurostat<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/figure>\n<p>Looking at individual <strong>countries<\/strong>, spending decisions fluctuate decisively. Devoting the largest percentage of GDP to their defence are <strong>Latvia<\/strong> (3.1 per cent of GDP), <strong>Estonia<\/strong> (2.7 per cent) and <strong>Lithuania<\/strong> (2.5 per cent), not surprisingly bordering <strong>Russia<\/strong>.\u00a0<span style=\"margin: 0px; padding: 0px;\">They are followed by Greece (2.2 per cent) and\u00a0<strong>Poland<\/strong>\u00a0(2.1 per cent), which has made important strides in increasing the quantity and quality of its military capabilities.<\/span>\u00a0<span style=\"margin: 0px; padding: 0px;\">In contrast, Malta (0.4 per cent) and\u00a0<strong>Ireland<\/strong>\u00a0(0.2 per cent) are spending less.<\/span>\u00a0<span style=\"margin: 0px; padding: 0px;\">Notably below the 2 per cent of GDP spending target required by NATO are also\u00a0<strong>France<\/strong>\u00a0(1.8 per cent),\u00a0<strong>Italy<\/strong>\u00a0(1.2 per cent) and\u00a0<strong>Germany<\/strong>\u00a0(1.1 per cent).<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0px;\">Slightly less than half (42 per cent) of total defence spending in 2023 was for the payment of <strong>salaries and salaries<\/strong>, 29 per cent for the government purchase of <strong>goods and related services<\/strong>, 20 per cent in <strong>capital investment<\/strong> (such as the purchase of weapons, infrastructure, and vehicles), and the remaining 7.8 per cent involved <strong>capital transfers<\/strong>.\u00a0<span style=\"margin: 0px; padding: 0px;\">Specifically, between 2021 and 2023,\u00a0<strong>military aid<\/strong>\u00a0increased from \u20ac8 billion to \u20ac24 billion, constituting\u00a0<strong>0.1 per cent of EU GDP<\/strong>, with major differences in Slovakia (1.2 per cent), Denmark (0.5 per cent), Latvia (0.4 per cent), Germany, Luxembourg, and Sweden (0.2 per cent).<\/span>\u00a0France, Italy, Spain and Poland, on the other hand, allocated 0.1 per cent. The smallest <strong>expenditure item<\/strong> was the investment in <strong>research and development<\/strong>, which accounted for a negligible part of national spending in all states except France (where it constituted 0.1 per cent of GDP).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Eurostat data: The 27 devoted 2.7 percent of their spending to military security. Baltic countries, Greece and Poland the leaders, Italy in 18th place. Military aid increases while investment in research and development remains negligible<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7883,"featured_media":244300,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[30809],"tags":[27336,30670,28172,25744,25882,28370,25745],"class_list":["post-422839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-defence-security","tag-industry-en","tag-investimenti-en","tag-aid-military-en","tag-safety-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7883"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422839"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422839\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":422852,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422839\/revisions\/422852"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}