NATO announced on Tuesday 16 March that eleven countries belonging to the organisation spent at least 2% of their GDP on defence in 2020.
All NATO members have committed to increasing their defence spending to 2% of GDP by 2024.
According to a report based on estimates for 2020, the eleven countries are the United States (3.73%), Greece (2.68%), Estonia (2.33%), the United Kingdom (2.32%), Poland (2.31%), Latvia (2.27%), Lithuania (2.13%), Romania (2.07%), France (2.04%), Norway and Slovakia (2%).
Some countries exceeded 2% because of the reduction in GDP caused the Covid-19 pandemic, however.
By way of contrast, Bulgaria’s defence spending, which represented 3.35% of GDP in 2019, was only 1.6% in 2020. Defence spending represented only 0.57% of Luxembourg’s GDP last year.
On average in 2020, defence spending in the 30 NATO countries represented 2.77% of GDP, and 1.73% if the United States (whose defence spending is well over 3% of GDP) is not included. 2020 was also the sixth consecutive year of increased defence spending by Canada and European members of NATO, and the year saw a real terms increase of 3.9%. In 2020, the Allies spent US$1.028 trillion on defence, including US$717 billion by the United States alone.
The report on defence spending by the countries in the North Atlantic Alliance can be found at: https://bit.ly/3qTtal1 and the NATO Secretary General’s Annual Report for 2020 can be found at: https://bit.ly/3bRLhn9 (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)