Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on May 26, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 23, 2026
Add as preferred source on GoogleNATO members plan to agree on a 5% GDP defense spending target at the upcoming summit, with 3.5% for military and 1.5% for security-related expenses.
BRUSSELS (Reuters) -NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said on Monday that he assumes alliance members will agree to a broad defence spending target of 5% of gross domestic product during a summit in The Hague next month.
"I assume that in The Hague we will agree on a high defence spend target of in total 5%," Rutte said at a meeting of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in Dayton.
"Let's say that this 5%, but I will not say what is the individual breakup, but it will be considerably north of 3% when it comes to the hard spend, and it will be also a target on defence-related spending," he added.
Reuters reported earlier this month that Rutte had proposed NATO members raise defence spending to 3.5% of their GDP, and a further 1.5% on broader security-related items to meet U.S. President Donald Trump's demand for a 5% target.
NATO aims to agree on the new targets at a summit of alliance leaders in The Hague on June 24-25.
Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof said earlier this month that "Rutte has sent a letter to all NATO members to say that he expects that the commitment at the NATO summit will be 3.5% on hard military spending, to be reached in 2032, and 1.5% on related spending such as on infrastructure, cyber security, and similar things also to be reached by 2032".
(Reporting by Lili Bayer, Editing by Charlotte Van Campenhout and Hugh Lawson)
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte assumes that alliance members will agree on a defense spending target of 5% of their gross domestic product.
NATO aims to agree on the new spending targets at a summit of alliance leaders in The Hague on June 24-25.
Rutte had proposed that NATO members raise defense spending to 3.5% of their GDP, with an additional 1.5% for broader security-related items.
While Rutte did not specify the individual breakdown, he indicated that hard military spending would be considerably north of 3%.
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