By Lili Bayer, Sabine Siebold and Andrew Gray
BRUSSELS (Reuters) -NATO defence ministers will gather in Brussels on Thursday to discuss how to meet Donald Trump’s demand for significant increases in spending, less than three weeks ahead of a key summit of the alliance in The Hague.
The U.S. president has said NATO allies should boost investment in defence to 5% of gross domestic product, up from the current target of 2%.
Diplomats say the European allies understand that hiking defence expenditure is the price of ensuring a continued U.S. commitment to the continent’s security and that keeping America on board means allowing Trump to be able to declare a win on his 5% demand during the summit, scheduled for June 24-25.
“We have to go further and we have to go faster,” NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte told reporters on Wednesday.
“A new defence investment plan will be at the heart of the NATO summit in The Hague,” he added.
In a bid to meet Trump’s 5% goal, Rutte has proposed alliance members boost defence spending to 3.5% of GDP and commit a further 1.5% to broader security-related spending, Reuters has reported.
But details of the new investment plan will likely continue to be negotiated until the very eve of the NATO summit.
“We have to find a realistic compromise between what is necessary and what is possible really to spend,” German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said on Wednesday.
Countries remain divided over the timeline for a new pledge.
“There’s not unlimited time,” U.S. ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker told reporters on Wednesday.
Rutte has proposed reaching the 5% by 2032 – a date that some eastern European states consider too distant but which some others see as too early and unrealistic given current spending and industrial production levels.
A 2032 target is “definitely too late”, Lithuanian Defence Minister Dovile Sakaliene said on Wednesday, arguing for a target of 2030 at the latest.
There is also an ongoing debate over how to define “defence-related” spending, which might include spending on cybersecurity and certain types of infrastructure.
“The aim is to find a definition that is precise enough to cover only real security-related investments, and at the same time broad enough to allow for national specifics,” said one NATO diplomat.
(Reporting by Lili Bayer, Andrew Gray, Sabine Siebold and Makini BriceEditing by Gareth Jones)
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