Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has pledged to meet a new Nato target to spend 5% of the UK’s GDP on national security by 2035.<\/p>\n
At a Nato summit in the Netherlands, 32 member countries including the UK are expected to agree the 5% goal, with 3.5% to go on core defence and the remaining 1.5% on defence-related areas such as resilience and security. <\/p>\n
The split target is aimed at placating US President Donald Trump, who has urged Nato allies to spend more, while giving cash-strapped EU countries flexibility over how they meet the target.<\/p>\n
Downing Street has argued measures on energy and tackling smuggling gangs could be classified as security spending. <\/p>\n
Speaking ahead of the two-day summit, Sir Keir said the UK had to “navigate this era of radical uncertainty with agility, speed and a clear-eyed sense of the national interest”. <\/p>\n
“After all, economic security is national security, and through this strategy we will bring the whole of society with us, creating jobs, growth and wages for working people.”<\/p>\n
Nato (the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) is made up of 32 member countries who agree to defend each other if attacked. <\/p>\n
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and Trump’s re-election as US president last year, members of the organisation have faced increased pressure to boost their defence spending.<\/p>\n
Countries had been expected to spend at least 2% of their national income – or GDP – on defence, although last year, only 23 hit that target – an increase from three in 2014.<\/p>\n
In January, Trump said 2% was “not enough” and that Nato allies should be spending 5%.<\/p>\n
And speaking last year before his re-election, he said he would “encourage” aggressors to “do whatever the hell they want” to European allies who don’t pay their way.<\/p>\n
In February, Sir Keir set out plans to increase the UK’s defence spending, as opposed to national security spending, to 2.5% by April 2027 and expressed a “clear ambition” to reach 3% by 2034 if economic conditions allowed.<\/p>\n
On Monday, the government said it expected to reach the target of spending 4.1% of GDP on national security by 2027.<\/p>\n
The 1.5% element of the 5% Nato target is for what is described as “resilience”, such as border security and protection against cyber attacks.<\/p>\n
For the UK, this latter element is expected to be met by the year after next, with core defence spending reaching 2.6% by then. <\/p>\n
Getting core defence spending to 3.5% isn’t expected until 2035 \u2013 two general elections away \u2013 and Downing Street hasn’t said how it will be paid for.<\/p>\n
Alongside the spending commitment, the government published its National Security Strategy which said the UK needed to be more “competitive and robust” in science, education, trade and frontier technology.<\/p>\n
It also sought to stress that investment in defence would be felt “directly in the pockets of working people” pointing to new jobs that would be created. <\/p>\n
The summit will be Mark Rutte’s first as secretary general of Nato. Speaking at a press conference on Monday, the former Dutch prime minister said the 5% spending commitment was “a quantum leap that is ambitious, historic and fundamental to securing our future”.<\/p>\n
However, it is unclear how nations will meet the target or whether they will at all.<\/p>\n
On Sunday evening, Spain claimed it had secured an opt-out, something later denied by Rutte.<\/p>\n
Ukraine is not a member of Nato and although President Volodymyr Zelensky has been invited to the summit dinner he will not be taking part in discussions of the North Atlantic Council.<\/p>\n
Last week, Ed Arnold from the defence think tank Rusi told the BBC contentious issues – including a new Russia strategy – had been removed from the summit’s agenda.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has pledged to meet a new Nato target to spend 5% of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208779,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[748,393,4884,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-208778","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-northern-ireland","13":"tag-scotland","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114735042346459944","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208778","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=208778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}