NATO to apply pressure for increased defence spending

Slovak Foreign and European Affairs Minister Miroslav Lajčák (a Smer-SD nominee) expects that following the inauguration of new US President Donald Trump NATO will start pushing its member states into increasing their expenditures in the defence sector, TASR learnt on Wednesday. Slovakia is set to allocate €998 million on defence, which represents 1.19 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP). At the NATO Summit in Wales in 2014, Slovakia committed itself to earmarking 1.6 percent of GDP for defence by 2020. However, the political agreement with NATO expects member countries to invest as much as 2 percent of GDP in the defence sector. "We expect that pressure will come and also that we'll be required to submit a credibility plan explaining when we'll reach that 2-percent threshold," said Lajčák after the Cabinet session. The chief of Slovak diplomacy noted that the Slovak economy is among those posting the fastest growth rates within the EU and NATO. "So, even though the percentage ratio remains unchanged, in absolute figures [defence] expenditures are rising. For example, we recorded a 13-percent year-on-year hike in defence expenditures last year," said Lajčák, adding that an immediate jump to 2 percent of GDP isn't a reasonable solution. "The defence minister [Peter Gajdoš] himself said that the army isn't able to absorb that," he said.