3 Oct, 2025 @ 08:45
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Spain’s PM Pedro Sanchez wants climate change action counted as defence spending – and Europe isn’t happy

Pedro Sanchez. Cordon Press

SPANISH Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is making waves in Copenhagen by trying to label climate change action – plus emergency and disaster management – as part of Spain’s defence budget.

While world leaders are huddled over Russian aggression, buying tanks, bombs, and big guns, Spain is doing its own thing – putting the planet ahead of missiles.

According to El Mundo, Madrid is pushing the idea that spending on climate equals spending on security, calling it a ‘360º approach’ to keeping the country safe. Sanchez has also added the fight against disinformation to the global security mix.

The PM is defending Spain’s record, boasting that the country has already boosted defence spending by 43.11% to hit the old 2% of GDP benchmark – despite calls from NATO allies to spend even more. NATO nations, meanwhile, have already agreed to push spending to 5 per cent of GDP.

Spain is adding €10.5 billion to defence and security in 2025 compared to 2024. But here’s the kicker: around €1.75 billion – roughly 15% of that – is going toward emergency and disaster management, not missiles or troops. Sánchez reportedly told reporters bluntly: “Climate change kills.”

Supporters point to a decade of climate-related chaos in Spain, which they say has cost €30 billion in damage and 20,000 lives.

READ MORE: Spain’s Balearics up the ante against invasive snakes with €2.5m spend and 2,600 traps

Elsewhere, Denmark’s PM Mette Frederiksen agreed that immigration and climate change matter for security – but she’s also pushing Europe to bulk up militarily, urging countries to ‘move from words to deeds’ and increase support for Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Sanchez’s climate-first approach is rubbing European heavyweights the wrong way. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wants a ‘drone wall’, Finnish PM Petteri Orpo demands southern solidarity – and Spain risks being left on the sidelines.

The country has already been snubbed from the international coalition against drug trafficking in Venezuela and warned by the US over business with Chinese tech giant Huawei.

Sanchez may be championing the planet, but in the world of global security, it seems Spain is standing alone.

Click here to read more Green News from The Olive Press.

Dilip Kuner

Dilip Kuner is a NCTJ-trained journalist whose first job was on the Folkestone Herald as a trainee in 1988.
He worked up the ladder to be chief reporter and sub editor on the Hastings Observer and later news editor on the Bridlington Free Press.
At the time of the first Gulf War he started working for the Sunday Mirror, covering news stories as diverse as Mick Jagger’s wedding to Jerry Hall (a scoop gleaned at the bar at Heathrow Airport) to massive rent rises at the ‘feudal village’ of Princess Diana’s childhood home of Althorp Park.
In 1994 he decided to move to Spain with his girlfriend (now wife) and brought up three children here.
He initially worked in restaurants with his father, before rejoining the media world in 2013, working in the local press before becoming a copywriter for international firms including Accenture, as well as within a well-known local marketing agency.
He joined the Olive Press as a self-employed journalist during the pandemic lock-down, becoming news editor a few months later.
Since then he has overseen the news desk and production of all six print editions of the Olive Press and had stories published in UK national newspapers and appeared on Sky News.

1 Comment

  1. climate is the biggest scam of our history. it is the agenda of the CCP/Davos gang/WEF/int´s communist/UN/Lefty(whatever names they use, all the same) to thoroughly control us, enslave us. they already tried covid jabs( bioweapon), not climate change is the next narrative to carry out this last push.

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