More pressure on Spain over defense spending

Spain was the undisputed protagonist at the NATO defense ministers' meeting in preparation for the decisive summit of the Atlantic alliance, which will be held on June 24 and 25 in The Hague (Netherlands) . The permanent US ambassador, Matthew Whitaker, explicitly referred to "our Spanish friends" to ask the government of Pedro Sánchez to join the other members who have agreed to raise the defense investment target to 5% over the coming years.

It's worth remembering that our country ranks last among the 29 members of the alliance in terms of public investment in security and military equipment as a percentage of GDP : 1.24%. The urgent measures announced last May by the president, such as reallocating underutilized budget allocations, increasing the salaries of Armed Forces professionals and the pensions of reserve personnel, and accounting for already planned spending on cybersecurity or the acquisition of dual-use technologies as defense investments, will allow us to reach the 2% of GDP already achieved by the other NATO countries.

However, for its Secretary General, Dutchman Mark Rutte, this indicator has become outdated in the face of the threats the alliance faces in the coming years: "It clearly needs to be higher." His proposal is to increase direct military investment to 3.5% of GDP and dedicate an additional 1.5% by 2032 to other security-related items . There will be more pressure on Sánchez to meet these goals at the meeting in The Hague.