Seven of NATO’s 30 member states have reached their 2022 military spending target, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced on Tuesday during the presentation of the organization’s annual report, Reuters and Agerpres reported.

At a press conference held at the Alliance’s Brussels headquarters, Jens Stoltenberg said that NATO initially expected two more countries to meet the goal of spending 2% of GDP on defense.

“But because GDP grew more than expected for the two allies, these two countries are slightly less than 2%,” he explained.

According to tables included in NATO’s annual report, the seven countries are: the United States (3.46% of GDP on defense), the United Kingdom (2.16% of GDP on defense), Estonia (2.12%), Latvia (2.07%) . , Lithuania (2.47%), Poland (2.42%) and Greece (3.54%).

According to the same source, Romania allocated 1.75% of GDP to defense last year, 1.86% of GDP in 2021, 2.01% of GDP in 2020 and 1.84% of GDP in 2019.

At the level of NATO, the value of the indicator in 2022 was 2.58% of GDP, and at the level of the European countries of NATO and Canada, it was 1.65% of GDP, which means that the USA has a significant contribution to the country’s budget. Alliance.

Jens Stoltenberg asked the allied countries to quickly replenish military expenses. “There is no doubt that we need to do more and do it faster. The pace we are at when it comes to increasing defense spending is not fast enough. In an increasingly dangerous world, we must invest more in defense,” the NATO Secretary General said.

At the summit in Wales in September 2014, the leaders of the NATO countries agreed that within 10 years, the member states of the Alliance should achieve the goal of allocating 2% of GDP to the defense budget. The decision was a response to what was perceived as a worsening security situation in Europe several months after Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula.

Almost a decade after the summit in Wales and a year after the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, NATO nations began discussions a few weeks ago on how to adapt earmarked spending to military spending.

A decision is expected at the Vilnius summit in July, and Jens Stoltenberg has said he sees the 2% of GDP level as a floor, not a ceiling.

On the other hand, Stoltenberg warned China about the supply of lethal weapons to Russia, in the context of which the presidents of Russia and China, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, are currently holding consultations in Moscow.

“We have not seen any evidence that China is supplying Russia with lethal weapons, but we have seen some indications that there has been a request for it from Russia, and this issue is being discussed in Beijing by the Chinese authorities. China should not provide lethal aid to Russia, this would mean supporting an illegal war,” the head of NATO emphasized.

___

• Follow the latest events of the war in Ukraine LIVETEXT on HotNews.ro