For the first time in three decades, Germany has notified NATO of planned defence spending amounting to at least 2% GDP.
According to research by dpa, the German government reported allocating the equivalent of $73.41 billion for defence spending in the current year. This is a record figure for Germany in absolute terms and would be 2.01% of GDP, according to the current NATO forecast.
In the past, according to documents from the NATO archives, Germany last spent 2% of its GDP in 1992. In the Cold War years, the ratio was usually over 3%.
The development of NATO countries’ defence spending will be discussed this Thursday at a meeting of defence ministers at the NATO headquarters in Brussels. It is expected that around 20 of the 31 NATO states will reach the 2% target this year.