NATO countries meet next week for the first alliance summit since Donald Trump’s return to the White House. The U.S. president wants members to spend 5 percent of their GDP on defense, a big jump from the current 2 percent target, which Madrid will reach only this year.
To placate Trump, Rutte has proposed that the 5 percent target should include 3.5 percent of GDP on purely military expenditures and 1.5 percent for defense-related items such as military mobility and cybersecurity.
NATO’s decision-making process is consensus-based, meaning one ally can block the other 31 with a veto. Earlier this month, Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles said Madrid would not prevent NATO allies from agreeing to a new 5 percent target, but that her country would stick to 2 percent for now.
“Of course, it is not our intention to limit the spending ambitions of other allies or to obstruct the outcome of the upcoming summit,” the Sánchez letter reads, asking for either flexible wording that would make the target optional or a proper carve-out for Spain.
In contrast, Swedish political parties on Thursday agreed to meet the 5 percent target by 2032 and to borrow as much as 300 billion krona (€27 billion) to do so.
Sánchez argued that Spain doesn’t need to spend 5 percent of its GDP to fulfill its so-called capability targets, meaning new objectives of weapons inventory agreed by NATO defense ministers earlier this month.
