NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced Tuesday new negotiations with member countries on increasing the defense budget, especially in view of the current geopolitical situation.
«Some allies are strongly in favor of raising the 2 percent target and making it a minimum,» he pointed out, before affirming that he will lead such talks. «We will meet, we will have our meetings at ministerial level, we will talk about money,» he asserted.
In this sense, he indicated that he is sure that the member states will manage to reach an agreement in view of the next summit, scheduled for July 11 and 12 in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius.
Currently, NATO members should contribute as much as possible at least 2 percent of their Gross Domestic Product to defense by 2024, an issue that was agreed in Wales in 2014 after the Russian annexation of the Crimean peninsula.
Stoltenberg, however, did not specify which allies are now requesting an increase in this ceiling, which he has referred to as a «threshold» on previous occasions. Countries such as Poland, Lithuania and the United Kingdom have recently favored an agreement to increase funding in the face of advancing Russian troops in Ukraine.
However, Germany, Canada and Belgium, among others, have expressed their rejection of this measure given that they spend less than 2 percent of GDP on defense. The dispute over the increase in this budget increased especially under the now former U.S. President Donald Trump, who went so far as to accuse the German government and other European allies of threatening to provoke the U.S. to leave the alliance.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
