NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said the alliance’s military capability goals could require member states to spend up to 3.7 percent of GDP on defense, but that amount could be reduced if allies, including joint arms purchases. According to NATO calculations, in 2024, in terms of GDP ratio, Poland spent more on defense than all the members of this alliance, and in 2025, according to the state budget, even more – almost 5 percent.
– The new military capacity targets, emerging as a result of NATO’s internal planning process, show that the Alliance needs more than three percent (of GDP expenditure – editor). Rutte said at the European Parliament committee meeting in Brussels that this two percent is not enough.
But he added that the joint purchase of weapons and equipment, as well as innovation, can reduce the amount of necessary funds allocated by each country separately. – If we remove this (separate cost – ed.), we should not get what we fear now, that is, 3.6-3.7 percent. (After – ed.) this number will decrease a little, but it will be much more than two percent, he said.
Mark Rutte (right) at the European Parliament. Photo dated January 13PAP/EPA/OLIVIER HOSLET
Trump wants five percent of GDP for defense
In early January, US President-elect Donald Trump stated that NATO countries should spend five percent of their GDP on defense. Reuters explains that “this is a level that analysts say is politically and economically impossible for almost all 32 members of the Pact.”
In June 2024, NATO estimated that 23 member states would meet the current goal of spending two percent of GDP by December of this year, while nine would not.
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Poland is the leader in the NATO report
In 2024, NATO prepared a report on the financial costs allocated to the military by the member states of the Alliance. It is based on the data collected until the beginning of summer. According to them, the expenditure in Poland is 4.12 percent of the GDP. In terms of GDP, this is the highest among all allied countries.
According to this report, Poland also spent the percentage of defense money on military equipment. Poland was the only country in this ranking that exceeded 50 percent (the exact estimate was 51.1 percent) of the total amount allocated for defense.
Defense expenses in NATO countries Mateusz Krymsky/PAP
In nominal terms, that is, the actual amount spent, the leader is usually the United States, which, according to NATO data, should have spent 968 billion dollars on its military in 2024. All other member states are required to provide a total of about $506 billion toward this goal, and all of them will provide less than $100 billion individually, although Germany planned to come very close to that limit as its spending for the year 2024 is estimated at 98 billion dollars. . The third place, after the USA and Germany, is the United Kingdom, which plans to spend 82 billion dollars on defense in 2024, and the fourth is France, which plans to spend 64 billion dollars for this purpose.
Poland was in the fifth place (fourth in Europe) in NATO with the expected military expenditure of about 35 billion dollars.
According to the 2025 budget, Polish military spending will amount to PLN 186.6 billion (about $47 billion), or 4.7 percent of GDP. This will be another consecutive year of increasing expenses for this purpose. NATO countries, which in 2024 are expected to increase their defense spending to 3 percent of their gross domestic product, according to data compiled by the alliance, are Estonia (3.48), the United States (3.38), Latvia (3.15) and Greece ( 3.08).
Main image source: NATO
