Next EU presidency: Nations moving toward NATO spending goal
TALLINN, Estonia: The leader of the next EU presidency said that several EU nations which were publicly scolded by US President Donald Trump about their defense expenditure will be reaching a key NATO target next year.
Estonian Prime Minister Juri Ratas said in an interview with The Associated Press on Friday that NATO nations spending 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) could almost double from the current five to possibly nine by the end of 2018, including two other Baltic nations, Latvia and Lithuania.
Pressed by a US taking on most of the spending in the 28-nation alliance, NATO set the 2-percent target for its members to move toward by 2024. Estonia, Britain, Poland and Greece are already hitting the mark. Some barely spent about half that up to a few years ago.
“The most important is the message that we all are, little bit, but we are going to catch this 2 percentage level,” Ratas said.
Trump insisted at a NATO summit last week that 2 percent was a bare minimum and lashed out at those European nations that he believes have been dragging their heels, arguing it was unfair to the US.
The latest US figures put its defense spending at 3.2 percent of GDP. The latest NATO figures for major EU nations are 0.91 percent for Spain, 1.11 percent for Italy, 1.19 percent for Germany and 1.78 percent for France.
The discrepancy was a hot debating point at the NATO summit dinner last week, Ratas said.
“Some very big states from Europe, they said during this dinner that the next three or four years we will have this level for the defense expenditure,” Ratas said. He did not elaborate.
Ratas will take over the rotating six-month EU presidency at the end of the month, and the 28-nation bloc has been stressing that the defense capabilities of EU nations should improve and that cooperation should be streamlined to cut out wasteful spending overlaps.
With Estonia and several other NATO nations bordering an increasingly belligerent Russia, many had been hoping that Trump would again public commit to NATO’s “all for one, one for all” Article 5 in case of attack.