Spain will reach 2% of GDP in 2025 in security and defense spending required by NATO. This has been announced by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, during an appearance in the Moncloa in which he has detailed that his executive will undertake an additional expense of 10,471 million euros through a plan approved on Tuesday in the Council of Ministers.
“It will be this government who complies with what others breached. With what we present today, Spain will fulfill this year 2% of the Gross Domestic Product in security and defense that the EU and NATO demand,” said Sánchez, which has described the measure as “an important and proportional effort to the one we made in 2014 and the challenges facing Spain and Europe.”
The president has insisted that all this will be done “without raising taxes, without touching the welfare state and without incurring a greater public deficit.” Asked about the origin of the funds that will now be used for security and defense, and taking into account that the Executive has refused to present a budget project for this year in the absence of parliamentary support, it has detailed that the money will proceed from three fronts: from the reorientation of the European funds, of the savings generated “by the management of this government and that in 2024 a growth that exceeded the forecasts of all international organizations” Finally “of the margin that certain items that were included in the budgets of 2023”.
“With all these mechanisms and remnants, the Government will fulfill its commitment without affecting social spending,” insisted the president, who explained that, precisely because it is these formulas, the plan will not require its validation in the General Courts. “From a material and legal point of view it is not necessary to pass this budget allocation through the Cortes because it does not demand any additional effort.”
“If they had asked me a few years ago about my expense and investment plans in defense, my response would have been different. But it is not that we have changed, it is that the world has done it,” he justified before insisting that, in any case, that new roadmap is not incompatible with a reformist agenda for strengthening the welfare state. “2% of GDP for defense expenditure is a commitment acquired by the previous administration, which left it in 0.9%. We have increased that effort to 1.4% and has not been an obstacle to increase social spending by 120,000 million or by 30,000 million fight against climate change.”
Budget readjustaries
Sanchez has exposed during his speech that the plan has three main objectives: “reinforce our security and our defense, reindustrialize and give a new technological impulse to our economy and fulfill our commitments and consolidate Spain as a central actor in the European Union.” And has detailed up to five different points of that plan.
The first section detailed by the President consists of a game equivalent to 35% of the total amount of the 10,471 million aimed at “improving the working conditions of the troop and the sailor, improving their preparation conditions and also modernizing the equipment of the armed forces”.
In the second point, the industrial and technological plan for strengthening security and defense includes 31% of the investment “to prepare, manufacture and acquire new telecommunications and cybersecurity capabilities” because, as explained, “Spain is object every year of a thousand cyber attacks to essential services and infrastructure, which affect the operation of hospitals and airports”.
“That is why,” he continued, “we are going to invest 3,260 million euros in modernizing the telecommunications systems encrypted of our Armed Forces, in acquiring new satellites, antennas, radars and also in reinforcing our cybersecurity instruments both of military use and civil use, artificial intelligence, 5g and quantum computing with the aim of creating a digital shield for Spain.”
The third departure is what refers to strictly military investment and that has meant a total discrepancy between partners in the Council of Ministers held on Tuesday, with the rejection of adding a plan that they qualify as “exorbitant, inopportune and inconvenient” and requests the President to be retired. Specifically, it is an investment of 19% of the total expenditure to “the manufacture and purchase of new defense and deterrence equipment” since those that are “more efficient and safer.” That is, to weapons and combat equipment. “We do not do it to attack anyone. Spain is a pacifist country that believes in diplomacy, which believes in international relations, which believes in multilateralism. We do it to deter those who may be thinking of attacking or attacking Europe,” he defended.
The fourth and fifth points of the approved plan generate less friction within the coalition, according to the sources consulted in the Moncloa that, in any case, subtract political transcendence from a discrepancy “managed with respect by both parties.” These items include 2,750 million euros to “reinforce the capacities of our armed forces in the management of emergency and natural disasters such as floods or fires” with the expansion of the fleet of rescue helicopters, the acquisition of new vehicles, cistern aircraft or a new hydrographic ship. And also the improvement of the security conditions of the almost 3,000 troops that make up the 16 peace missions that Spain currently performs abroad under the United Nations flag, of the European Union or also of the Atlantic Alliance.
“As we promised, we will not touch a penny of social spending to finance this increase in investment in security and defense, nor will we undertake tax increases because we will maintain fiscal sustainability,” the president has committed, which has predicted that the plan will contribute “to consolidate the economic growth of Spain, with an estimated impact of 0.4 – 0.7 additional points 96,000 new direct and indirect jobs for the impulse to technological innovation and industrial development in Spain.
Source: www.eldiario.es
