Signal Only three European allies already meet NATO's 3.5 percent core defence benchmark

Summary

NATO figures show that on 2025 estimates every ally reported defence spending meeting the long-standing 2 percent of GDP guideline. European allies and Canada together raised defence outlays by 20 percent in real terms over the previous year. Yet only Poland at 4.30 percent, Lithuania at 4.00 percent and Latvia at 3.74 percent already exceeded the new 3.5 percent core benchmark, and the combined ratio for European allies and Canada was 2.33 percent. The European Defence Agency estimates that bringing EU member states' defence spending to 3.5 percent of GDP would mean about 635 billion euros a year, roughly 254 billion more than the 381 billion euros, or 2.1 percent of GDP, estimated for 2025. The numbers show how much further most allies must go by 2035, even before the broader 1.5 percent security category is counted.