Rutte thinks that’s very unlikely.
“Spain thinks they can achieve those targets with 2.1 percent spending. NATO is absolutely convinced that Spain will have to spend 3.5 percent to get there,” Rutte said at his Monday press conference in The Hague, ahead of the NATO leaders’ summit on Tuesday and Wednesday.
“NATO has no opt-out and NATO doesn’t know side deals,” Rutte said.
He stressed that each country will now regularly report on their progress in reaching the top secret capability targets. “So we will see, and anyway, there will be a review in 2029,” Rutte said.
Spain’s pushback against the 5 percent target has also inspired other countries with low defense spending to look for similar exemptions. On Monday, Belgium announced that it would seek “maximum flexibility” from NATO.
“We may not have done so by making a noisy statement like Spain, but I can assure you that for weeks our diplomats have been working hard to obtain the flexibility mechanisms,” Foreign Minister Maxime Prévot told local media.
Last week, the country’s prime minister, Bart De Wever, told lawmakers that the Belgian government would support NATO’s new defense spending target, even though it is a “bitter pill to swallow.”
