Defence spending by NATO’s European members and Canada was 20 per cent higher in 2024 than the previous year, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said, ahead of a meeting in which they are likely to come under renewed US pressure to spend more.
Rutte’s comments on February 7 came ahead of a meeting in which the European Union nations and the Canadians were likely to come under renewed US pressure to spend more, according to Reuters.
US President Donald Trump has stepped up calls on fellow NATO members to boost their spending on defence, which he frequently demanded during his first term in office.
Many members have been anxious to show that they have taken his message on board and have already increased military spending, particularly since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
NATO said the 20 per cent boost by the alliance’s non-US members took their total defence spending to more than $485 billion (€468.02 billion).
“I’m looking forward to hosting defence ministers at NATO next week where we’ll talk about investing more and better in defence,” Rutte said in response to a Reuters request to NATO for the latest spending figures.
“We’ve crunched the numbers. They’re going up. In fact, spending by Europe and Canada is up 20 per cent in 2024, bringing the total additional investment in recent years from $640 billion [€617.59 billion] to $700 billion [€675.49 billion].”
NATO said “recent years” referred to the period since 2014, when members of the transatlantic military alliance agreed on a goal of spending 2 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) on defence.
According to NATO estimates published last year, 23 of the alliance’s 32 members now met that goal.
But Trump said in January that NATO members should now spend 5 per cent of GDP on defence – a level that no NATO country, including the US, currently reaches.
Last year, it accounted for about two-thirds of all defence spending by NATO members, according to the alliance’s data.
NATO said it could not make further spending figures available at present but said it expected to release more at a s meeting of alliance defence ministers on February 12, which wouuld include a debut for Trump’s Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth.
