BRUSSELS — It’s time for the entire continent to cough up more cash for defense, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys said Monday, in an apparent message to spendthrift Southern European countries.
Budrys said “now we have the instruments and we need the political will to increase our defense spending,” referring to the European Commission’s plan to send loans of up to €150 billion to national governments to help them boost military spending.
“We see it as useful tools, not only for a part of the European Union, but for the whole union,” he also added. If “only Nordics, Baltics or other parts … will increase their defenses, it won’t work ” he told journalists before a meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels.
Europe is scrambling to ramp up its ability to deter Russia while U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration signals a retreat from the transatlantic alliance that has underpinned European security since World War II.
Lithuania, which borders Kremlin ally Belarus and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, has committed to allocating between 5 percent and 6 percent of its GDP on defense from next year to 2030. Neighboring Poland will spend 4.7 percent of GDP on defense this year — the highest in NATO. Other Baltic and northern countries have also committed to defense spending above the current NATO target of 2 percent of GDP.
In the south, however, Italy will spend 1.57 percent of GDP on defense in 2025 and Spain 1.28 percent; Madrid is currently pushing for a broader definition of defense spending to include cybersecurity, anti-terrorism and efforts to combat climate change.
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