US to press Europe allies on military spending

US Secretary of Defence Jim Mattis was to press European allies yesterday to stick to a promise to increase military budgets as the United States offers an increase in its own defence spending in Europe.

For the first time, Nato countries have submitted plans to show how they will reach a target to spend 2 per cent of economic output on defence every year by 2024, after President Donald Trump threatened to withdraw support for lowspending allies.

Fifteen of the 28 countries, excluding the United States, now have a strategy to meet a Nato benchmark first agreed in 2014 in response to Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region, following years of cuts to European defence budgets.

It is unclear whether that will be enough to impress Trump when he attends a Nato summit in July.

Nato data shows that Britain, Greece, Romania and the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania meet, or are close to, the 2 per cent goal, while France and Turkey are among those countries set to reach it soon.

France plans to increase its defence spending by more than a third between 2017 and 2025, but Spain has said it will not meet the 2024 target. Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Italy, Portugal, Norway and Denmark are also lagging, while Hungary expects to meet the goal only by 2026.