Joint defense spending in 2024 in European NATO member countries will amount to more than 2% of GDP

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced before the alliance’s ministerial meeting that European NATO members will spend a total of more than 2% of GDP on defense this year for the first time.

About it reports European Pravda correspondent from Brussels, emphasizing that over the 10 years of the Russian war against Ukraine, six times more alliance member states have achieved spending more than two percent of GDP on defense, the bloc has taken a course to increase spending. Stoltenberg noted:

“European allies and Canada have increased defense spending by more than $600 billion since the allies made their defense investment commitments in 2014. Last year we saw an unprecedented increase in spending by European allies and the US – by 11%. In 2024, NATO members in Europe will invest (spend on defense) $380 billion. This will exceed 2% of their total GDP for the first time.”

The Secretary General specified writes dw, how many NATO members will spend more than 2% on defense by the end of 2024:

“I expect 18 allies to spend 2% of GDP this year. And this is also a record. This is a six-fold increase since 2014, when only three allies met this requirement.”

He stressed that for some of the allies, “there is a long road ahead”, since almost half of the 31 NATO member states have still not reached the 2% target, which is mandatory for all allies in the alliance. Military spending by European NATO countries and Canada has increased by 11% over the past year, a record figure, Jens Stoltenberg said. He criticized former US President Donald Trump for undermining the collective security of the alliance and said:

“We must leave no room for miscalculation or misunderstanding in Moscow about our readiness, our commitment, our determination to defend all allies.”

As our publication previously reported, in 2024 Russian military spending will increase by 70%, and secret expenditure items will reach 11.1 trillion rubles. Bloomberg, citing the draft Russian budget for 2024, tells about the Russian Federation’s plans to increase military spending.

Next year Russia plans to spend 10.8 trillion rubles on them. In 2023, 6.4 trillion rubles have been allocated for military purposes, that is, an increase of 68.8%. The share of military spending in GDP will also increase significantly – from 3.9% to 6%. Before the invasion of Ukraine, in the last pre-war year (2021), Russia spent 3.6 trillion rubles, or 2.7% of GDP, on defense.

Secret expenditure items will increase to 11.1 trillion rubles, from 6.5 trillion rubles last year. They will amount to approximately 30% of total budget expenditures (36.6 trillion). Back in 2021, before the war, secret spending accounted for only 14.9%. The increase in classified expenses, Bloomberg notes, indicates that the Kremlin is trying to hide the real costs of the war in Ukraine.

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