Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s Secretary General, has announced new negotiations on defense spending. He said some members want to increase the current minimum target.
“Some allies are in favor of turning the 2 percent target into a minimum target,” Stoltenberg told dpa. As chairman of the North Atlantic Council (NAC), Stoltenberg will lead the negotiations. “We will meet, we will hold ministerial meetings and we will hold talks in the capitals,” he said. The aim is to reach an agreement at the NATO summit on 11 and 12 July in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius.
At the NATO summit in Wales in 2014, member states made a commitment to increase defense spending to 2 percent of GDP by 2024. That was decided just after Russia annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in the Black Sea.
Belgium only by 2035
Stoltenberg did not say which countries want to increase spending, but according to diplomats Poland, Lithuania and Great Britain are in favor, especially in the context of the war in Ukraine. Nine member states are currently meeting the 2% target, but current plans are for nineteen NATO countries to meet it by 2024. Five other Member States have plans to reach that budget at a later date.
Belgium plans to achieve that target of 2 percent only by 2035. This is stated in a letter from the Belgian NATO ambassador to Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, about the increased Belgian efforts.
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