Defense spending in Europe continued in 2022 with the upward trend of recent years, but there is no reason for complacency, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned yesterday in the presentation of the organization’s annual report. “Despite the fact that we are going in the right direction, we are not moving as fast as the dangerous world we live in demands of us”, he warned after taking stock of the changes that took place last year in the European security landscape with the beginning of the war in Ukraine.
In the wake of Russia’s illegal invasion and annexation of Crimea, in 2014 the Atlantic Alliance pressed European countries and Canada during the Wales summit to reverse the trend of recent years, marked by for a constant reduction in the percentage of their GDP allocated to defense, and they committed themselves that in a decade the level of expenditure would be at 2%. Then, only three allies were above this figure (the United States, the United Kingdom and Greece).
From 2014 the spending trend in Europe and Canada reversed and, nine years later, now threatened by the invasion of Ukraine, Poland and the three republics have been added to the group of allies that exceed this threshold Baltics; the biggest increases were recorded in Lithuania and Latvia, which in 2022 doubled their spending compared to the previous year, and Slovakia. Apart from that, there are two other countries on the verge of exceeding 2% defense investment, France and Croatia. Spain, despite the investments of the last year, remains as the penultimate allied country in this classification; according to the Alliance’s estimates, in 2022 Spain allocated 1.09% of its GDP to defence. The Central Government plans to increase this item of expenditure by 25.8% during 2023, a push that should allow reaching the goal of 2% of GDP in 2029, five years later than what was agreed in Gal· the
The worsening security situation forces, according to Stoltenberg, to “do more and more quickly”, so that at the next summit in Vilnius (Lithuania), scheduled for July, he will propose to the allies to commit to the fact that the 2% that was agreed in Wales ceases to be a ceiling to be considered “a minimum, a basis for what needs to be invested in defence”. Despite the fact that “NATO has allowed almost 75 years of peace in Europe and North America, today we live in the most dangerous world since the Second World War”, he pointed out.
NATO claims that public opinion is in agreement with these objectives. According to a survey that was carried out in November and that has been included in the new annual report, 74% of the population of allied countries are in favor of maintaining or increasing defense budgets, 73% in the case of Spain. Also according to this survey, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has increased popular support for the military organization.
While in 2021 61% of the population said they would vote yes in a hypothetical referendum on their country’s membership of the Alliance, this percentage now rises to 70% (69% in Spain). In addition, 35% of the population of allied countries “strongly” supports the fact that their country militarily helps Ukraine to defend itself against Russia and 34% “tend to be in favor” of this position.
