Spain will invest an additional 10.4 billion euros in defense to reach the target of 2% of NATO by 2025, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez officially announced after Tuesday's ministerial meeting in Madrid.
The chief of the center-left stressed that Spain remains a “pacifist” country and said that new investments were intended to dissuade “those who could think of attacking Europe”.
Less from the fifth of the plan funds will be allocated to “the purchase of weapons in the traditional sense of the term”, added the socialist chief.
As part of the proposed defense and security plan, 35% of new investments will be used to improve the working conditions of troops, more than 31% for new telecommunications technologies and cybersecurity, almost 19% for defense and deterrent tools, and almost 17% to support the management of emergency and natural disasters.
Sánchez told journalists that new investments will not affect the pockets of citizens, because the Spanish government does not provide any tax increase, the growth of public debt or the reduction of the welfare state in order to increase the defense and security expenditure of the country to around 34 billion euros in 2025.
“Money will come from post-country collection funds, government savings through economic growth, the margin given to us by elements included in the 2023 budget and which are no longer necessary,” said Sánchez.
In addition, Sánchez has promised that most investments (around 87%) will go to Spanish companies and that less than 5% will be spent outside the EU. “The goal of this project is to take a new technological and industrial jump,” he said.
The Spanish security and defense plan will be submitted Wednesday for analysis to the European Commission and NATO.
Until now, Spain has been the most NATO blade country to achieve the target of defense expenses of 2% agreed in 2014 by the Transatlantic Military Alliance. This reference should be raised at least 3% at the NATO annual summit in June in The Hague.
NATO secretary general, Mark Rutte, called for months on several occasions the 32 allies to increase military spending to fill the critical capacity gaps and ensure the security of the continent in the face of potential aggression – and former American president Donald Trump even asked that counterparts increase expenses to 5% of their GDP, a figure that no allied allied.
NATO European members have already told the first American diplomat that the damage of this figure was currently not realistic, but they have committed to increase the sharing of the burden on the Alliance.
Italy – one of the eight allies who has not yet reached the objective – announced last week that it will do it later this year.
“We are fully aware, in particular in the light of current tensions, of the need to increase these expenses in the coming years,” said the Minister of the Economy, Giancarlo Giorgetti last Thursday.
