Yet questions remain about future funding. A €10 billion plan by Madrid to ramp up spending, released just before last year’s NATO summit, earmarks some €4 billion to telecoms, cyber defense and natural disaster response. “My fear [is] that in the future, [much of that] could be discounted by NATO’s accounting system” for military spending, Arteaga said.
Add to that, Spanish Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has emerged as one of Trump’s top European critics, so the latter is unlikely to cut him any slack. So when it comes to a blow-up over defense spending, “the risk is clearly there,” said Luis Simón, a security and diplomacy professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
Trump blow-up risk: 💥💥💥💥💥
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has emerged as one of Trump’s top European critics. | Nicolas Tucat/Getty Images
The U.K.
Britain has signed up to NATO’s 5 percent target, but so far only 2.6 percent is fully funded.
Departmental spending plans set by Chancellor Rachel Reeves put the country on track to reach 2.6 percent spending on defense by 2027, but there’s no budget roadmap to meet the rest, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer only setting an “ambition” to hit 3 percent of GDP in defense spending in the next parliament.
The funding gap burst into the open this month when Defence Secretary John Healey resigned over the lack of additional money for Britain’s upcoming Defence Investment Plan. In his letter to Starmer, he warned that the DIP only guaranteed an extra 0.08 percent increase between 2027 and 2030. Britain has “no path” to meeting the 3.5 percent spending target on core military capabilities, he said Thursday.
