NATO members are $61 billion away from achieving their defense targets

report Mehr News Agency, according to Rashatudi, research by the German “Ifo” center, commissioned by the Financial Times newspaper, shows that the European members of NATO have 56 billion euros ($61 billion) to fulfill The targeting of this military alliance is far.

According to the findings of this research, in 2023, Washington allocated two-thirds of NATO’s total cost of $1.3 trillion; This figure is more than three times the 393 billion dollars spent by EU members plus England and Norway.

Also, according to this research, the countries of Germany, Italy, Spain and Belgium have the greatest distance from NATO’s goal (allocation of 2% of GDP in the field of defense). NATO member countries agreed to this goal in 2014 after the start of conflicts in Ukraine, which led to the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula to Russia.

Berlin spent 15.2 billion dollars less than the target last year, and Rome, Madrid and Brussels also had deficits of 12, 17 and 5.1 billion dollars, respectively. According to the Financial Times, Italy, Spain and Belgium were among the 6 EU countries last year whose debt exceeded 100% of their GDP.

According to this research, the total spending deficit of NATO member countries has been reduced by half in the last decade. NATO has announced that it expects 18 of the 32 member countries of this alliance to meet the 2% goal in 2024.

Donald Trump, the former president and current candidate for the US presidential election, has said that if he returns to the White House, if NATO member countries do not fulfill their financial obligations, It will not “protect” them against Russia.