Croatia Commits 5% of GDP to Defence

Five percent of GDP is now Croatia’s defence promise by 2035. Prime Minister Andrej Plenković made the commitment to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in Brussels this week, putting Zagreb in line with the alliance’s new spending benchmark (24sata, NATO). Croatia currently spends just above 2%. Getting to 5% means more than doubling the effort in a decade, without yet showing the public how the money will be raised, phased, or spent.

What 5% actually means

NATO’s new target is split in two: 3.5% of GDP for core defence, meaning armed forces, equipment and operations, and up to 1.5% for defence-related resilience, including critical infrastructure, cyber, civil preparedness and defence-industrial capacity (NATO, Evening Standard). The old 2% benchmark was a political guideline first set in 2006 and reaffirmed after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. It was not legally binding. The new target works the same way: pressure from allies, not a court-enforceable obligation (Institute for Government).

The second category is where the politics starts. Italy says it reaches roughly 2.8% when it includes the Carabinieri, coast guard, space and cybersecurity, while specialist analysis puts actual military spending closer to 1.57% (Sky TG24, Analisi Difesa). Slovenia says it reached 2.01% last year. Slovenian media reported Rutte’s position as being that Ljubljana had still not met 2% under NATO’s own methodology (Svet24, Regional Obala). What a government books as defence and what NATO accepts as defence can be two different numbers.

The southeastern gap

The pledge responds to real gaps on NATO’s southeastern flank, running from the Adriatic through the Balkans to the Black Sea. The missing pieces are practical: integrated air and missile defence, counter-drone systems, ammunition stockpiles and logistics corridors to move allied reinforcements. Rutte and Plenković specifically discussed air and missile defence and Western Balkans security (NATO, 24sata). If Croatian money buys systems that work with allied forces, the benefit goes beyond Croatian territory. If it becomes a spreadsheet exercise, the Adriatic-Balkans corridor remains thin.

Poland shows the opportunity and the risk. 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 must be squared with budget stability (Rzeczpospolita), and its Supreme Audit Office has challenged how the government classifies military advances in the budget (Bankier). Spending heavily is not the same thing as being ready. Major deliveries run through the decade, while 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 signal that summit language 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 indication of which industries would win the contracts. The pledge gives Croatia political credibility before next month’s NATO summit. Credibility without numbers does not last long.

Next month’s summit will show whether Croatia’s pledge produces air defence batteries, reinforcement corridors and usable capacity, or whether 5% becomes another accounting category whose meaning changes depending on who is doing the counting.