Spain wants exemption from NATO’s 5 percent defense spending target – POLITICO
www.politico.eu

NATO allies will meet in The Hague next week and are expected to agree to significantly boost military expenditure, but Madrid is reluctant.

Spain wants a carve-out from NATO’s likely future defense spending goal of 5 percent of GDP, the country’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said ahead of next week’s high-stakes alliance summit in The Hague.

“Spain will continue to fulfil its duty in the years and decades ahead and will continue to actively contribute to the European security architecture. However, Spain cannot commit to a specific spending target in terms of GDP at this summit,” Sánchez told NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte in a letter seen by POLITICO.

Spain has the lowest military spending of any NATO member, allocating just 1.3 percent of its GDP to defense in 2024. Sánchez said earlier this year that Russia didn’t pose an immediate security threat to Spain.

  • glaber@lemm.eeEnglish
    1120·
    2 days ago

    Good, I wish NATO would disintegrate and European defence return to the competences of the European Union. I don’t want my taxes to benefit the United States neither economically nor strategically. They’ve proven time and time again they want to go it alone. They want to be bosses of the world and everyone to answer to them. Fuck them.

    • Laser@feddit.orgEnglish
      62·
      2 days ago

      Good, I wish NATO would disintegrate and European defence return to the competences of the European Union.

      “Return”? It was never really there.

      I don’t want my taxes to benefit the United States neither economically nor strategically.

      The 5% are not a membership fee that goes to the US. What the US most often got out of NATO was that they defined the standards and requirements, which at some point required American IP and American products to fulfill those. But in the end, the leverage they had was their huge investment in NATO that also benefited other nations; once the American investments end, other nations will fill that void (hopefully).

      Restricting such an alliance to the EU would rule out members like Canada, for example

      • glaber@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        23 hours ago

        “Return” or “go” my general message is the same. The Western Union was a precursor to the Western European Union, which existed for a bit over 50 years and was oficially fully dissolved into the EU in 2011. It predated NATO and was a fully European military alliance made for Europe by Europe. I wish we could pick up that torch. I’m of course not opposed to military cooperation with other countries (like Canada), but a mutual-defense clause that includes the US is a no go for me.