NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg expects the alliance’s member states to raise their current spending target on defence of 2% of national output when they meet for a summit in Vilnius in July, he told German newspaper Die Welt, according to Reuters.
“I assume that there will be a new target for defence spending when we meet for the NATO summit in Vilnius in July this year,” Stoltenberg told Welt.
“The two percent target was initially for a decade, so until 2024, so we have to update it now.”
Stoltenberg said he could not yet say what the member states would agree on. “But I assume that it will be a more ambitious target than before, because everybody sees that we need to invest more,” he added.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February last year, many allies have increased their military spending.
Stoltenberg urged allies on Tuesday to speed up deliveries of heavy and more advanced weapons to repel Russian forces in Ukraine and expressed confidence that a decision on sending battle tanks to Kyiv would come soon.
Stoltenberg was speaking in Berlin alongside Germany’s new defence minister, Boris Pistorius, who said his government would act quickly on the tanks if a consensus was found.