Croatia pledges 5% of GDP for defence

Five percent is the kind of number that changes a defence debate from policy into politics. Croatia has now promised to spend that share of national wealth on defence by 2035. Prime Minister Andrej Plenković gave the commitment to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in Brussels this week, putting Zagreb behind the alliance's new benchmark (24sata, NATO).

Croatia spends just over 2% at present. Getting to 5% would mean more than doubling the effort within a decade. For now, the promise has arrived before the plan.

What 5% actually means

NATO's new target is split in two. The first 3.5% of GDP is for core defence: armed forces, equipment and operations. A further 1.5% can cover defence-related resilience, including critical infrastructure, cyber, civil preparedness and defence-industrial capacity (NATO, Evening Standard).

The old 2% benchmark was first set as a political guideline in 2006 and reaffirmed after Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014. It was never a legal obligation. The new target works in the same way: pressure from allies, not a rule that can be enforced in court (Institute for Government).

The second bucket is where the politics begins. Italy says it reaches about 2.8% when it includes the Carabinieri, coast guard, space and cybersecurity. Specialist analysis puts actual military spending closer to 1.57% (Sky TG24, Analisi Difesa). Slovenia says it reached 2.01% last year; Rutte's view, according to Slovenian press reports, was that Ljubljana had not met 2% under NATO's own methodology (Svet24, Regional Obala). What a government counts and what NATO accepts can be two different figures.

The southeastern gap

The Croatian pledge responds to real weaknesses on NATO's southeastern flank, from the Adriatic through the Balkans to the Black Sea. The gaps are practical ones: integrated air and missile defence, counter-drone systems, ammunition stockpiles and the logistics corridors needed to move allied reinforcements.

Rutte and Plenković specifically discussed air and missile defence, as well as security in the Western Balkans (NATO, 24sata). If Croatian money buys systems that can work with allied forces, the benefit goes beyond Croatian territory. If it becomes a clever accounting exercise, the Adriatic-Balkans corridor remains thin.

Poland shows both the force and the limits of the spending argument. Warsaw spent about 4.48% of GDP in 2025, making it Europe's proportional defence leader (Euronews). But Poland's Fiscal Council has warned that defence needs after 2028 have to be squared with budget stability (Rzeczpospolita), and its Supreme Audit Office has challenged how the government classifies military advances in the budget (Bankier).

High spending does not automatically produce high readiness. Major deliveries run through the decade, and about 40% of European equipment spending reportedly goes to non-EU suppliers (Euronews).

The missing plan

Rutte has asked allies for "clear, concrete and credible plans", a pointed signal that summit promises will not be enough (NATO). Croatia has not yet published one.

There is no public year-by-year spending path, no split between core defence and resilience, no procurement list with delivery dates, and no map showing which industries would win the contracts. The pledge gives Croatia political credit heading into next month's NATO summit. Without the spreadsheet behind it, that credit will not last long.

Next month's summit will show whether Croatia's promise turns into air defence batteries and reinforcement corridors, or into another accounting formula that changes depending on who is doing the counting.