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Military spending in Europe? Higher than at the end of the Cold War

2024-04-22 13:55:41Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX

Military spending in Europe? Higher than at the end of the Cold War

Defense and security spending across Europe increased by 16% from 2022 to 2023, with Poland doubling its arms budget since 2014. Military spending in Central and Western Europe is now higher than last year of the Cold War, a new report has found.

According to new data published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Europe has seen a broad increase in military spending since the start of 2022, reaching a total of €552 billion in 2023.

The increase is 16% more than the countries in question spent in 2022 and 62% more compared to 2014, where the expenses were 330 billion euros. All but three European NATO members, Greece, Italy and Romania, increased their military spending in 2023.

Lorenzo Scarazzato, a research assistant from SIPRI, explained that military spending in Europe has increased every year in a row since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea. This initial action and the full invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has caused governments in Europe to increase their defense budgets at an unprecedented rate.

The tendency of Western and Central European countries to increase their military budgets is mainly in response to an increase in Russian spending, according to SIPRI. The UK was the biggest military spender in Europe in 2023, with arms purchases accounting for 2.3% of its gross domestic product (GDP).

Britain's Ministry of Defense announced this year that it would raise this figure to 2.5%, although Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt has admitted that its domestic economic conditions mean it has yet to reach this target. Germany has also increased its military spending, rising by 48% from 2014 to 2023.

In 2022, the German government created an extra-budgetary fund to meet NATO's target of 2% of its GDP to be spent on defense each year, a target the country signed up to in 2014 but has not met. reached this year. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz publicly committed to transforming his country's defense and security stance three days after the invasion of Ukraine.

Delivering a speech to parliament that described the moment as a "Zeitenwende" (turning point), Scholz vowed to dramatically increase his country's defense spending and reform his military. While Western European countries still account for the largest share of the continent's total military spending, Central European countries are making their largest contribution to Europe's defense spending since the end of the Cold War. Poland made Europe's largest proportional increase in its defense spending between 2022 and 2023, spending 3.8% of its GDP on defense in 2023, still far from its stated target of 4%.

Poland has long made increasing its defense spending a priority. Polish President Andrzej Duda called on NATO members to increase their spending earlier this month, citing concerns that Russian President Vladimir Putin was preparing to attack NATO in the coming years.


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