Estonia aims to increase its defense spending to 5 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP), Prime Minister Kristen Michal said at a press conference on Friday, reported Xinhua.
The announcement followed a European Union (EU) leaders' meeting in Brussels on Thursday to amend budget rules, allowing member states greater flexibility in investing in defense capabilities. Support was also expressed for defense loans, Michal said.
He noted that the EU's decisions would enable Estonia to move toward this goal more rapidly. "Acting together, we can count on 800 billion euros to strengthen the EU's defense capabilities and to help Ukraine," he added.
Michal also highlighted Estonia's plans to enhance cooperation with Ukraine.
On Tuesday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen unveiled an 800-billion-euro plan aimed at significantly increasing defense spending across the bloc. She emphasized that in response to growing security threats across the EU, Europe had entered "an era of rearmament."
Meanwhile, Spain is set to increase defense spending to 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) "as soon as possible," the country's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has announced.
Spain was already planning on dedicating 2 percent of GDP to defense by 2029, but Sanchez said at a press conference from Brussels after a meeting of EU leaders on Thursday that due to changing international circumstances, "we will all have to make an earlier effort in respect to what we had decided beforehand."
Sanchez said the EU leaders' meeting had "considered new tools, among them flexibility in fiscal rules," to allow for increased defense spending.
The bloc doesn't just need to invest more in defense, he said, but to invest it better, making a joint analysis of the capacities required for Europe – not individual countries – to deal with future threats.
Spain's Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation Jose Manuel Albares echoed Sanchez's words in statements made to the press in Barcelona on Friday.
"The world has changed with dizzying speed before our eyes, and we have to quickly take control of our destiny," the minister said.
According to Spanish state TV network RTVE, Spain currently spends 1.28 percent of its GDP on defense.
- Estonia
- Spain
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Source: www.dailyfinland.fi
