Beleaguered Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez has rejected NATO’s minimum target for its members’ defence spending. Faced with pressure to contribute the equivalent of 5% of GDP, the PM called the goal “unreasonable.”
NATO secretary general Mark Rutte heard from Sánchez that the alliance’s ambition was ‘counterproductive,’ suggesting it could drag down Spain’s already lacklustre economic growth. The same concerns were magnified in a letter published in El País, where the proposed expenditure is described as being
not necessary to fulfil our commitments to the alliance [and] has nothing to do with the level of commitment to collective defence.
Spain’s defence spending is now at 1.3% of GDP, and any increase is seen by Madrid as a threat to public services and its green transition. The embattled Sánchez’s vision seems to exclude economic growth expanding the economy to pay for defence.
The NATO target is influenced by U.S. president Donald Trump’s calls for members of the alliance to pay their own way. European leaders like Sánchez—who are more than highly equivocal in their ‘support’ for supposed ally Israel—continue to show a failure to take their own sovereign defence seriously.
