Nato members urged to bolster defence spending in ‘a more dangerous world’

The head of Nato has urged member states to up their defence spending after France and others failed to meet the alliance’s target of 2 per cent of GDP.

Jens Stoltenberg said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine showed the world had become more dangerous, and Nato allies had to respond by setting and meeting more ambitious military spending goals.

Seven of the alliance’s 30 countries met the current goal of spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence in 2022 - one fewer than in 2021, according to estimates in Nato’s annual report released on Tuesday.

Greece, the US, Lithuania, Poland, Britain, Estonia and Latvia met the target.

However, France, Croatia, Belgium, Spain and Luxembourg fell behind.

Overall defence spending by Nato allies was up 2.2 per cent on the previous year.

Mr Stoltenberg said Nato had expected France and Croatia to hit the target but their economies had grown by more than anticipated so their spending came in lower as a share of GDP.

“There’s no doubt that we need to do more and we need to do it faster,” Mr Stoltenberg told reporters at Nato headquarters in Brussels.

“The pace now, when it comes to increases in defence spending, is not high enough,” he said. “My message to allies is that we welcome what they’ve done but they need to speed up, they need to deliver more in a more dangerous world.”

At a summit in Wales in 2014, Nato leaders agreed to the goal of moving towards spending at least 2 per cent of their GDP on defence within a decade.

Nato leaders are expected to agree a new target at a summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, in July.

Mr Stoltenberg said 2 per cent of GDP should now be seen as a minimum.

“I will advocate for a more ambitious pledge than the one we made in 2014,” he said. “If there was a need to increase defence spending back in 2014, this is even more obvious now.”