NATO countries will have to increase their military spending to 3% of GDP and above, NATO Deputy Secretary General Angus Lapsley said, speaking at the annual Globsec security conference in Prague.
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“Yes, I think that NATO countries can do this, it is significantly lower than military spending during the Cold War,” he said, answering the question of whether NATO countries could raise their military spending above the 3% of GDP that Donald Trump demanded. being President of the United States.
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“Given the threatening scenarios we face today, most NATO countries will have to increase their military spending well above 2% of GDP (which is currently the NATO target) if they truly want to increase their military capabilities,” he said.
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At the same time, Lapsley did not support the idea of introducing regular meetings of the finance ministers of the alliance countries within NATO to agree on the level of military spending.
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At the NATO summit in Brussels in 2018, Trump demanded to raise military spending by European countries not to 3%, but to 4% of GDP. The goal of bringing each NATO country’s military spending to 2% of GDP was set by the alliance at the NATO summit in Wales in September 2014. By 2024, two thirds of NATO countries have achieved this goal – 23 out of 32
