US President-elect Donald Trump said on Tuesday that NATO countries must increase their defense budgets to 5% of their GDP, after repeatedly saying that members of the Alliance were not doing enough to ensure their protection. “They can all afford it,” said the Republican billionaire, who will take office on January 20 at the White House. “They should be at 5%, not 2%,” he added during a press conference in Mar-a-Lago, Florida.
“We have something called an ocean between us, don’t we? Why are we paying billions and billions of dollars more than Europe?,” he asked. According to NATO’s 2024 forecast budget, the United States paid two-thirds of the organization’s overall budget last year. The former and future American president makes no secret of the little regard he has for the Atlantic Alliance, a pillar of security in Europe since the Second World War, repeatedly repeating that its members do not pay enough in exchange for the protection of the United States.
Even the United States is not at 5%
A figure of 5% which seems quite far-fetched since today no NATO member, not even the United States, reaches this threshold. Poland, the best student in the class, devotes 4.12% of its GDP to defense, ahead of Estonia (3.43%) and the United States (3.38%).
NATO countries pledged ten years ago, after Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, to devote at least 2% of their gross domestic product (GDP) to military spending. 23 out of 32 have kept this commitment. Among the nine countries still below the threshold, Luxembourg (1.29%) but also Portugal (1.55%), Italy (1.49%) and Canada (1.37%), Belgium (1.3%).
Great efforts from Luxembourg
Luxembourg has made great efforts in this area and thus almost tripled the defense envelope in the space of ten years: in 2014, it only devoted 216 million to it – or 0.37% of its GDP. compared to 728 million in 2024. This represented almost 1,000 euros per inhabitant, compared to just under 400 ten years ago.
And the budget will continue to grow, reaching 1.106 billion euros by 2028 and reaching 1.4 billion euros in 2030, or 2% of GDP. Pushing up to 5% would mean exceeding three billion euros. This represents more than twice the amount of family allowances that the State plans to pay in 2025.
“We need military capabilities, not an abstract percentage.”
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“We are sticking to the current objective” of 2%, reacts Defense Minister Yuriko Backes, contacted by The essentials. She assures that Trump “did not communicate this figure (of 5%) to Luxembourg” before its media release. For the liberal leader, “what we need are military capabilities, not an abstract percentage”.
She explains that “the amount of investments must be defined on the basis of our military needs”, without being “an end in itself. We are investing in our defense in order to be able to guarantee, with our allies, defense and collective deterrence in the Euro-Atlantic area. Luxembourg and its allies prefer to “focus” on “collective defense plans” and the definition “of the military capabilities necessary to implement them”.
A decision to be made at 32
Furthermore, a single State cannot decide what others must pay. “The level of ambition is defined in consensus by the 32 members of the Alliance. This is not a unilateral decision,” insists the minister. “Discussions concerning any possible developments (…) will be carried out in the appropriate forums, in which Luxembourg will participate constructively and in the interest of a credible defense and deterrence policy.”
Coincidentally, Yuriko Backes is due to go this Thursday to the American base in Ramstein, Germany, to participate in a meeting of the “Ukraine Defense Contact Group”, at the invitation of the Secretary of Defense of the United States, Lloyd Austin . The opportunity, also, to raise the question of the budget?
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