New NATO targets “will force spending update” from €3 billion a year to €6.4 billion
Everything points to Portugal having to re-think its defence spending – still lagging critically behind almost every country in Europe.
And everything points to this theme being central to the presidential ‘race’, in which the ‘military candidate’ (still so far ‘undeclared’) has already warned that if we don’t start spending more, we risk ‘not having a country at all’…
Today, Expresso runs with the headline: “New NATO target will force Portugal to double its defence costs”. The only nugget missing in the article is the ‘when’: already this country is among a group of seven trailers who haven’t even managed to reach the target of spending 2% of GDP – and, until very recently, intentions were to ‘finally get to 2% in 2029’… This has since had to be radically reconsidered, and keeps being so.
First, came the admission by prime minister Luís Montenegro after a Council of Europe last month that Portugal would have to look at the 2% figure, “with a view to updating it”. Then came the stark words of the new NATO secretary-general Mark Rutte, who stressed “we are going to need a lot more than 2%” (and a lot sooner), and then also came the whole subject of how money will have to be found, come what way, and ‘yes’ it may come from reducing welfare costs, said Rutte.
And this is where the ‘spice’ will come with regard to the presidential ‘debate’: former Chief of Staff of the Navy, Henrique Gouveia e Melo (who hasn’t yet confirmed he is a candidate, but who remains the ‘front runner’ in the polls) has said, very much in the same vein as Rutte, ‘what is the point of welfare if you don’t have a country?’. The second ‘favourite’ (also as yet undeclared) political commentator and PSD supporter Luís Marques Mendes has said he doesn’t believe social costs would need to be affected ‘for a question of balance’ – and one-time Socialist leader António José Seguro (not yet endorsed by his party) has said of Rutte’s warnings “only someone who does not live in the real world could say that…”
So, there are many points of view – and there may even be many opinions on whether or not Portugal should be increasing its defence spending by the extent required by NATO – but the pressure is most definitely on.
Expresso drills down into what the increased defence spending implies per capita: €320 per year, per citizen (as opposed to the current €283 per year).
The big ‘but’ is that doubling defence spending will still not get the country anywhere near the proposal touted by Donald Trump. Mr Trump has said recently that he would like to see all NATO members to start stumping up 5% of GDP – that’s €10.2 billion more than the €3 billion that Portugal is currently spending, or, as Expresso puts it, “the equivalent of buying seven submarines a year”.
The paper concludes its article today with the opinion of the Socialist coordinator of the parliamentary commission on defence, Luís Dias. He believes that there needs to be a strategic pluriannual plan drawn up, “with urgency”, which lays the basis for increased spending for all three branches of the Armed Forces (Army/ Navy/Air Force) and which “rapidly accelerates production in the industries of National Defence” thus using the “enormous investment by the Portuguese (taxpayers) for economic gains that bring returns”.
First mention of a defence cluster came last summer, again from the PM, who said that it was a new strategic objective of his centre-right government.
natasha.donn@portugalresident.com
Source material: Expresso/ Lusa
