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.
“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.