NATO Sets 5% Defence Target

The promise made in Ankara sounded simple enough: every NATO member would move towards spending 5% of GDP on defence by 2035 (NATO, Euronews). All thirty-two allies signed up. The trouble, as so often in European security, sits in the detail. They did not all mean the same thing by the number.

For Irish readers, watching from outside NATO but very much inside the European security debate, this matters. The spending target will shape defence budgets across the EU, pull money towards military procurement, and sharpen the argument about how far European countries can rely on the United States. Ireland's neutrality keeps it outside the alliance, but not outside the consequences.

Why the Number Exists

The target came from a warning rather than a grand design. Before the summit, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte put the problem plainly: the United States is planning for conflicts beyond Europe and has scaled back its contributions to NATO's Force Model, the alliance system for matching forces to threats. European governments are being told to fund capabilities they had long assumed Washington would provide.

The 5% figure turns that gap into a bill. The formula, agreed at The Hague summit in 2025, splits the target into 3.5% for core military spending and 1.5% for broader defence and security. Ankara then added a demand for national plans that NATO can inspect, with a review in 2029. What it did not add was a clear answer to the obvious question: what happens when a government falls short?

Three Countries, Three Definitions

Lithuania arrived in Ankara with the urgency of a state that does not experience Russia as an abstraction. President Gitanas Nausėda was already spending 5.38% of GDP on defence and pressing for a firm US commitment to Article 5, the treaty clause under which an attack on one ally is treated as an attack on all. His government secured one tangible gain: Baltic air policing will be reclassified as an air-defence mission. That is not just a change of label. Air policing watches and intercepts. Air defence prepares to defeat an attack.

Spain stood at the other end of the argument. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez publicly rejected the 5% target, saying NATO should judge countries by capabilities rather than percentages. His government accused Rutte of trying to appease Trump and argued that Spain's operational contributions were enough. That dissent gives every fiscally squeezed ally a usable formula: sign the declaration now, argue about the definition later.

Germany sat somewhere between the two. Chancellor Friedrich Merz promised to reach 3.5% core defence spending by 2029. Berlin reported record spending of €124.7 billion, or 2.69% of GDP, a large increase that still leaves it well below even the core target. German coverage treated the summit as both a genuine act of reassurance and an exercise in handling Trump. The Bundeswehr's capability gaps and personnel shortages mean the distance between budget announcements and usable military force remains wide.

A Promise Without Penalties

France points to the weakness in the spending argument. Le Monde reported that European armies are becoming stronger, but in scattered and poorly co-ordinated ways. Le Figaro was blunter: Europe wants predictability from Washington, and Washington is not prepared to offer it. More spending inside NATO does not, by itself, make Europe less dependent on the United States.

Article 5 is also less automatic than its political shorthand suggests. The Washington Treaty says each ally will take "such action as it deems necessary", leaving the form and scale of any response to national governments. Ankara created no enforcement mechanism for the 5% target and no penalties for missed plans. Rutte called it a "delivery summit". By 2029, NATO will know whether governments bought real capability or merely bought themselves time.