The Ministry of Defense wants to increase its budget by 3,000 million euros, according to government sources quoted by El País, through an extraordinary credit aimed at meeting Spain’s commitments to NATO, whose summit will be held in Madrid at the end of the month.
However, according to the same newspaper, the plan encounters resistance in the Executive itself. Treasury sources do not believe that an increase in military spending of this volume is feasible now, nor that it will be approved by Parliament. The credit should be reflected in a decree law that would have to be approved by the Council of Ministers and ratified by Congress.
This process could reopen the tensions within the Government between the PSOE and United We Can and with their investiture allies.
Defense’s main argument to justify this credit is the strategic shift caused by the invasion of Ukraine and which has led to reinforcing the contingent in Latvia. Even if a measure of this type were approved in the short term, its execution would last at least this year and the next, according to the Prisa newspaper.
The increase of three billion would be equivalent to 25% of the annual defense budget, but even so, it would be 1.2% of GDP, still far from the objective of reaching 2% by the end of this decade.
