NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte is expecting new pressure from US President-elect Donald Trump about the comparatively low defence spending of European allies including Germany.
“He will want us to do more,” Rutte said in an interview with dpa.
NATO members are committed to invest at least 2% of their gross domestic product (GDP) in defence. And many European allies have now reached the spending goal, Rutte said.
In four to five years, however, there will be a problem with deterrence against Russia if defence spending is not increasing further, he said.
Rutte did not say whether NATO allies should aim to spend 3% of GDP on defence or even more.
A decision on new spending pledges is expected to be made at the alliance’s summit next June.
During the US election campaign, Trump had announced that he considered it necessary to increase the NATO defence pledge to 3%. There have recently been reports that Trump could even call for 5%.
In Trump’s view, European allies do far too little for defence and rely too much on the US for protection. During his first term in office, Trump even threatened to leave NATO over Europe’s low defence spending.
Germany has recently increased its defence spending massively, but will achieve a GDP ratio of around 2.1% only this year. The US is consistently spending significantly more than 3% of GDP on defence.