Spain has secured an agreement with NATO to be exempt from a defence spending goal of 5% of its GDP, just days before the alliance’s summit, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said on Sunday.
‘Spain will, therefore, not spend 5% of its GDP on defence, but its participation, weight and legitimacy in NATO remain intact,’ Sánchez said during a televised speech (main image).
He said that Spain will fulfill its obligations to the 32-member alliance by allocating 2.1% of its GDP to defence spending.
The exemption was formalised in a letter exchange on Sunday between NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte and Sánchez, where the wording related to the 5% target was revised to remove the phrase ‘all allies’, Sánchez explained.
Previously, in a letter sent Thursday, Sánchez informed Rutte that Spain would not be able to meet the proposed target, a stance that risked disrupting the upcoming summit in The Hague. ALSO READ: Pedro Sánchez rejects increasing military spending to 5% as demanded by Trump.
With all 32 member nations required to agree on any new defence spending benchmarks, Spain’s position posed a potential roadblock – especially with US President Donald Trump expected to attend.
Spain was NATO’s lowest defence spender last year, investing only 1.28% of its GDP, according to alliance data. In April, Sánchez pledged to increase that figure to 2% this year, a decision that sparked domestic criticism, including from members of his own political coalition. ALSO READ: Pedro Sánchez announces €10.5bn more in defence spending, to reach 2% of GDP.
Trump had weighed in on the issue on Friday, saying that Spain ‘has to pay what everybody else has to pay’, and criticised the country as ‘a very low payer’.
‘They were either good negotiators or they weren’t doing the right thing,’ he told reporters.
On Sunday, Sánchez stressed that ‘Spain believes that Europe should take charge of its own defence, an idea aligned with opinions such as those expressed by President Trump’. However, he maintained that a 5% defence budget was ‘incompatible with our worldview’.
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España ha logrado un acuerdo histórico con la OTAN que le permitirá seguir siendo un miembro clave de la Alianza y contribuir de forma proporcional a sus capacidades, sin tener que aumentar su gasto en defensa, ni alcanzar el 5% del PIB.
Tenemos que proteger Europa. Pero también… pic.twitter.com/jYc2Ilneaw
— Pedro Sánchez (@sanchezcastejon) June 22, 2025
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