On Thursday, Spain’s center-left prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, broke ranks with other NATO leaders as he refused to commit to spending 5 percent of GDP on defense. Since taking office in January, Donald Trump has demanded a massive increase from the current 2 percent spending target, as part of his administration’s plans to scale back the US military presence in Europe. For many member states, the 5 percent pledge is about keeping Trump onside after months of unprecedented diplomatic upheaval. Yet for Spain’s broad-left coalition government, it also reflects an uncritical rush toward European rearmament.
Under NATO secretary general Mark Rutte’s current draft proposal, member states would spend at least 3.5 percent of GDP on traditional defense by 2032 — with an additional 1.5 percent allocated to broader security issues like cybersecurity and border control. Rutte is selling this “compromise” as a way to give states the necessary flexibility to achieve the headline 5 percent pledge — and it largely fits with the historic spending targets discussed by Germany and France in recent months. If these latter announcements already strained credibility, Rutte’s proposal would require most Southern European governments to more than double their core military budgets within seven years.
This is the case for Sánchez’s administration, as Spain’s defense spending only reached 1.3 percent in 2024 (the lowest of any NATO member state). In a letter to Rutte ahead of next week’s crunch NATO summit, Sánchez laid out the reasons for rejecting the the 5 percent target, noting it was “incompatible with our Welfare state” and would only be possible through “increasing taxes to the middle classes, cutting public services and…
Auteur: Eoghan Gilmartin
