Only one third of NATO members to spend at least 2% of GDP on defense in 2023

Only a third of NATO member states will spend at least 2% of GDP on defense in 2023, the Munich Institute for Economic Research Ifo said, Report informs via TASS.

According to the institute’s data, only 11 out of 30 NATO countries will fulfill the promise to increase defense spending to 2% of GDP. The first place in terms of military spending in relation to its GDP is taken by Poland - Warsaw spends 4.3% of GDP on defense. Poland is followed by the United States (3.3%) and Greece (3.1%). The 2% target, the institute noted, is being met mainly by countries neighboring Russia, with several states significantly increasing their military spending since the start of the war in Ukraine. Thus, Estonia, Lithuania, Finland, Hungary, Romania, Great Britain and Latvia will spend more than 2% of their GDP on defense. Slovakia will allocate exactly 2% of its GDP to military spending.

The last in the defense spending ranking is Luxembourg - only 0.7% of GDP. In absolute terms, Germany is farthest behind the target. In 2023, the German government will spend €64 billion on defense. This will be 1.6% of GDP and €17 billion less than the target of 2%. "This is the largest deficit of any country," commented Florian Dorn, one of the authors of the study. No other country, he said, has such a huge gap between promises and actual spending.