Germany’s defence minister pushes back on NATO 5% spending target #NewsGerman

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius on Thursday pushed back against calls to raise NATO members’ defence spending target to 5% of their economic output.

At a meeting in Berlin with his British counterpart John Healey on Thursday, Pistorius responded cautiously to earlier remarks by German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul, who supported a similar demand by US President Donald Trump.

“The percentage is not so important. What is important is that the NATO capability targets that are then set are met quickly, comprehensively and on time,” Pistorius said, adding that talks about increasing the target to 3% or more were likely.

His comments came after Wadephul publicly backed Trump’s demand for a 5% target at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Turkey earlier on Thursday.

After talks with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Wadephul said they agreed with Trump’s assessment that this was necessary.

However, Wadephul made it clear that traditional defence spending of 3.5% of gross domestic product (GDP) would be sufficient, provided than an additional 1.5% was spent on military infrastructure – an approach recently proposed by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.

Pistorius later expressed dissatisfaction with his colleague’s comments. “I am pleased about the very, very good start I had and continue to have with my foreign minister colleague Jo Wadephul,” he said.

“At the same time, he knows as well as I do that the defence budget is set out in Section 14, which is my department.”