PRAGUE – Czechia is ready to support a potential 5% of GDP defence spending goal at this June’s NATO summit in The Hague, Czech President Petr Pavel said.
“If the discussions in The Hague lead us to a consensus that it is necessary to spend up to 5% of GDP on defence, the Czech Republic is ready to support it,” Pavel told Czech journalists after meeting NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Wednesday (21 May).
The move would go well beyond NATO’s current 2% baseline, which Czechia met for the first time last year. Prime Minister Petr Fiala’s (ODS, ECR) government has already committed to hitting 3% by 2030, but Pavel says allies may need to go further.
“When you add up all the needs of the armed forces and all the requirements that arise in the defence planning cycle for the years 2025 to 2029 and translate them into figures, they amount to somewhere between 3.5 and 3.7% of GDP,” Pavel said. “It’s similar in other countries,” he added.
Still, he cautioned against starting with numbers alone. “We should definitely not start the debate by asking how many percent of GDP we should spend on defence, but rather by asking what we need to feel safe,” he warned.
Before becoming Czech president in 2023, Petr Pavel served as the chief of Czech armed forces and then also as the chairman of the NATO military committee.