German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul encountered little enthusiasm for increased defence spending during his visit to Spain and Portugal on Monday.<\/p>\n
Germany is seeking to shore up support for a massive hike in defence spending, with both Wadephul and Chancellor Friedrich Merz backing a proposal to increase defence-related spending by NATO members to 3.5% of gross domestic product (GDP), with an additional 1.5% for military infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Such an increase in spending would require a massive financial commitment by NATO countries.<\/p>\n
When asked by journalists after the meeting with Wadephul whether Spain was prepared to increase its defence budget to 5% of GDP in future, Foreign Minister Jos\u00e9 Manuel Albares responded that Spain is making greater efforts in the defence sector than ever before.<\/p>\n
However, Albares described the existing NATO target of 2% of GDP as “realistic.”<\/p>\n
Portuguese Foreign Minister Paulo Rangel meanwhile said his country would “naturally” support a decision to increase the military budget, but admitted that the target of 2% had “not yet been fully” achieved.<\/p>\n
US President Donald Trump, signalling he is tired of European countries piggy-backing on Washington’s massive defence budget, is pushing for defence spending to be raised to 5% of GDP.<\/p>\n
Spain is currently among the alliance’s members spending least on defence, with military expenditure amounting to some 1.3% of GDP – well below the current target of at least 2%.<\/p>\n
While Portugal recently raised defence spending, expenditure in Europe’s westernmost nation only stood at 1.6% of GDP in 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul encountered little enthusiasm for increased defence spending during his visit to Spain and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134332,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5312],"tags":[59041,31610,2000,299,1699,1945,29135,59043,23353,59042,104,30227],"class_list":{"0":"post-134331","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-spain","8":"tag-cooperation-jose-manuel-albares","9":"tag-defence-spending","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european-union","13":"tag-friedrich-merz","14":"tag-johann-wadephul","15":"tag-minister-of-foreign-affairs","16":"tag-nato-members","17":"tag-palacio-de-viana","18":"tag-spain","19":"tag-spain-and-portugal"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114576461930830241","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}