Agency Report –
German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius on Wednesday rejected demands from US President Donald Trump for NATO allies to increase military spending to at least 5% of gross domestic product (GDP), up from the current 2% target.
“No, the 5% target is not on the table,” Pistorius said. “There is a demand from the American president that it should be 5%. The Americans themselves are still very, very far away from that.”
Pistorius met Trump’s newly appointed defence chief, Pete Hegseth, for the first time at a gathering at NATO headquarters in Brussels.
Hegseth underscored Trump’s demand at the Brussels meeting and contended it was justified.
Pistorius acknowledged that current defence spending levels of 2% or 2.5% of GDP aren’t sufficient, but also stressed that the current issues facing Germany’s budget would making a major increase very difficult, especially given Germany’s strict limits on government debt.
“We have to be honest at this point,” Pistorius said.
German defence spending has most recently been around 2.1% of GDP, with a substantial portion coming from a special €100 billion fund created after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Pistorius said raising German defence spending to 3% of GDP would require an additional €65 to €68 billion from an overall annual budget of about €480 billion. That kind of spending can’t be achieved without loosing Germany’s deficit spending rules, Pistorius said.
