Ben Pawlowski
PRIME minister Pedro Sanchez claimed victory on Sunday after striking a last-minute deal with NATO that would allow Spain to remain a member of the security alliance while opting out of a requirement to increase defence spending to 5% of GDP.
Announcing the agreement in an ‘urgent’ address to the Spanish people, Sanchez said his government had reached a ‘historic agreement’ whereby Spain would ‘neither have to increase defence spending nor reach 5% of GDP’.
NATO secretary-general Mark Rutte and US president Donald Trump are among those pushing member states to agree to spend 5% of national income on defence by 2032 – 3.5% on core defence spending and the remainder on related items such as intelligence.
But Sanchez threw a spanner in the works last week after writing a letter to Rutte in which he threatened to derail this Wednesday’s NATO summit in The Hague where member states are expected to agree to the 5% target.
As a member state, Spain has a veto on all decisions, which must be voted on unanimously.
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The Spanish premier demanded an exemption from the goal, a steep increase from the 1.3% that Spain spent on defence in 2024.
In a letter to Sanchez, Rutte said: “I can hereby confirm that the agreement at the upcoming NATO Summit will give Spain the flexibility to determine its own sovereign path for reaching the Capability Target goal and the annual resources necessary as a share of GDP, and to submit its own annual plans.
“In addition, the trajectory and balance of spending under this plan will be reviewed in 2029, in light of a strategic environment and updated NATO capability targets.”
In a statement on Sunday, Sanchez praised the deal as a ‘success’, which will allow Spain to ‘remain a key member of the Alliance and contribute proportionally to its capabilities, without having to increase its defence spending nor reach 5% of GDP’.
He added: “We must protect Europe. But we must also protect what makes it unique in the world: its welfare state and its defence of diplomacy, development aid, and peace.”
In return, Sanchez said Spain will spend 2.1% of GDP on defence ‘to acquire and maintain all the personnel, equipment and infrastructures requested by the alliance to confront these threats with our capabilities’.
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Previously, the socialist premier described the boost in defence spending to 5% of GDP as ‘disproportionate and unnecessary’, claiming that such an increase would have to be offset by tax rises for the middle classes or a massive reduction in the size of Spain’s welfare state.
Spain, along with the UK, Italy and Portugal, had been one of the leading voices against the rise in defence spending, caused by increased tensions with Russia and President Trump threatening to withdraw the US from the security alliance unless European members foot a larger proportion of the NATO bill.
The news is a welcome distraction from corruption allegations at home, which have threatened to bring down Sanchez’s government.
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