Pedro Sánchez asks to increase defense spending to 2% of GDP: “Beyond NATO, the world is very difficult”

Pedro Sánchez has assured that he will seek the support of the other political formations in the Congress of Deputies to increase defense spending in the next General State Budgets. This is an increase that aims to reach 2% by 2029, so it would be increasing progressively, and something to which the Government has committed.

Currently, defense spending accounts for 1.2% of GDP in Spain. The president of the Government has made these statements in an interview in ‘TVE’ prior to the beginning of the last session of the NATO Summit. It is precisely at this Summit that the strategic objectives for addressing present and future challenges in the framework of international security are being outlined.

In this sense, Pedro Sánchez has defended the importance of NATO with a phrase he used last Tuesday in the institutional declaration with Stoltenberg: “It is an alliance in defense of democracy”.

Sánchez has insisted that the Alliance uses deterrence as a defense instrument and has reflected on the current geopolitical context: “Beyond Europe and what NATO represents, the world is very complicated, it is very difficult, it is very cold”.

In order to achieve this increase in spending, the chief executive has explained that he will talk with all the political forces of the parliamentary arc. Without mentioning Unidas Podemos, a member of the coalition government, or other political forces, Sánchez insisted on the idea of defending democracy in reference to those formations that do not agree with the NATO action.

“It is a debate that we have to face in Spain both from the point of view of right-wing parties and in the progressive political space,” he explained. On the other hand, Podemos opposes the presence of more US ships in the base of Rota, something already agreed during this NATO Summit in Madrid, and that Sánchez frames in the country agreements. ” We must be responsible and solidarity with a certain threat that we are suffering”, he said about the current context.