European Commission plans to increase EU’s military budget more than five-fold

The European Commission plans to increase the EU’s military budget more than five-fold under the next seven-year budget for 2028-2034, raising spending from 25.5 bln euros envisaged in the 2021-2027 budget to 131 bln euros, European Commissioner for Defense Andrius Kubilius said at a security conference in Brussels.

According to him, if all EU nations raise their defense spending to at least 3% of GDP by 2028 (as part of efforts to implement NATO’s plan to increase defense spending to 5% GDP by 2035), the total defense expenditures of all member states will stand at 4.2 trillion euros in 2028-2035.

The EU’s seven-year budget is yet to be approved by its members. They have until 2026 to do so, and few doubt that this will be done.