Warsaw supports Trump's call for defense spending to reach 5 pct of GDP
Poland's defence minister expressed his endorsement of the incoming US President Donald Trump's request for NATO member countries to increase their defence expenditures in relation to their GDP.
Trump's suggestion on Tuesday to raise defence spending to 5 percent was met with divided opinions among the bloc's members, although it received backing from Poland, NATO's top spender on defence, which set a goal to allocate 4.7 percent of GDP to military needs this year.
In Sunday's interview for Financial Times, Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said that Poland might become "the transatlantic link between this challenge set by President Trump and its implementation in Europe."
Poland increased its military investments to 4.14 percent of GDP in 2024, two years after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Warsaw justified the decision by citing Poland's shared borders with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and Belarus, one of the Kremlin's closest allies.
Washington, while remaining NATO's strongest member, lags behind Poland in terms of defence spending. According to NATO data, the United States is currently allocating 3.3 percent of its GDP towards defence. Furthermore, with NATO's current target set at 2 percent, only 23 of the 32 member states have met this goal.
According to Kosiniak-Kamysz, Trump's target "will take another decade" to achieve. "But I think he should not be criticised for setting a really ambitious target because, otherwise, there will be some countries that will continue to debate whether more spending is really needed," he said.
Referring to the EU-funded multi-billion National Recovery Plan (KPO), added: "If we could afford to go into debt to rebuild after Covid, then we must surely find the money to protect ourselves from war."
The Financial Times wrote that Poland's EU presidency, a rotating six-month position that began in January, will be used by Warsaw to advocate for spending EUR 100 billion from the future common budget on defence. These funds, covering the period between 2028 and 2034, are expected to be discussed in Brussels later this year. (PAP)
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