France and Turkey are expected to hit 2 percent by the end of 2024, while Germany is aiming for 2025. Some errant major NATO nations have projected hitting the target soon. and newest member Finland-of the alliance's 31 states have met the threshold. Only eight members-the U.S., Estonia, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the U.K. Kallas said she is both "worried" and "surprised" at the repeated failure of most NATO nations to meet the 2 percent spending target. But with the majority of NATO states still failing to hit the 2 percent of GDP target adopted in 2014, Tallinn and its fellow Baltic capitals are facing a tough battle.Įstonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas arrives at a European Union Council Meeting on March 24 in Brussels. Her new coalition government has called on NATO allies to commit to a new military spending target of 2.5 percent of GDP at July's summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. She recently committed to spending 3 percent of Estonia's gross domestic product (GDP) on the military. "We are in a new security reality, and everybody has to do their share," Kallas told Newsweek in an interview at Stenbock House, the official seat of the Estonian government, in the capital city of Tallinn. The European Union and NATO minnows are also among the top contributors of military aid to Kyiv, seeing a Ukrainian victory as an extension of their own efforts to secure NATO's eastern frontier. NATO member states must face the "new reality" of long-term confrontation with Russia, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas says, by meeting and exceeding military spending goals that most allies have spent nearly a decade failing to meet.Įstonia and its Baltic neighbors have been significantly expanding their military spending in response to Russia's war against Ukraine.
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